By the time I sat down, they'd already called the race. Davis was out, cursed with having been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Arnold "Just look for the longest name" Schwarzenegger was in. And I was out $10 in snacks which I had bought in anticipation of a close race.
The pundits on T.V. weren't helping.
Jody Woodruff, CNN's politics woman at the Schwarzenegger camp, spent most of her time sucking up to Sean Walsh, the Gubernator's spokesman. Something about Schwarzenegger's uniqueness.
Jesse Jackson was on T.V., blabbing about how the reduced number of voting stations had disenfranchised people and that complaints were flooding in. It was a landslide, Jesse. Get over it.
Jackson also delivered the message that well-funded liberal interests intended to recall the newly minted governor. Apparently, all the arguments, like cost, don't apply if revenge is the goal.
It's amazing how fast people turn towards the same reprehensible behavior they've rightfully condemned in the past.
And far more than that, Democrats seeking a new recall vote would just alienate already angry voters. They'd go from a temporary setback to a permanent realignment.
For buried within this election was the story of a state angry at a bad economy, which then found someone to blame in their unpopular governor.
And then Darrell Issa gave the state a way to tell everyone just how much they thought it was his fault.
The bad economy situation wore Davis's friends out and didn't make him any new ones.
CNN commentators modestly described the result as a landslide for change.
But the good news for Democrats is that this landslide is also therapy: having vented on Davis, they won't vent on the Democratic nominee in November 2004.
2004 is all that should matter to Democrats. The disaster waiting to happen in California was that anger at Davis could have put California into play in Bush v. Unnamed.
All that anger we saw two nights ago was irritated by the constant images of jobs falling and a state stagnated.
All those images with Gray Davis's smiling face on TV, with that big D next to it, might just have put California a little too close to the red zone.
With California in play, the Democrats would have had a tough time. Losing California would mean losing the White House, so they'd have to defend it. And that would take time and resources from elsewhere.
Now Democrats can pin this all on the new governor.
Schwarzenegger's slogans about taxation, taxation and taxation will have to face reality: they're propaganda and not real solutions.
Some big W in Washington, D.C. is trying them now, and they're having a Herbert Hoover effect on the economy.
Bush and Schwarzenegger have got the same problems: not enough money to go around. Both have the same solution: lower taxes. Both subscribe to the supply-side quackery. Both should take macroeconomics.
Democrats should rejoice at this election. Schwarzenegger's supply-side ideas will fail, and thanks to his campaign promises, he can't reform the tax structure to get a fair share from his multimillionaire friends.
And when Schwarzenegger's misguided policies fail, it's not the nameless legislative figures that will be held to account by California.
It's Schwarzenegger, whose face will appear next to all the unemployment numbers, next to all the signs of a crumbling state and, very likely, next to Bush's when he makes any campaign appearance in California.
They won't have Gray Davis to kick around anymore. And that means Democrats can concentrate catching the big fish in the White House.
Raphael Schweber-Koren is a senior political science and computer science major from Takoma Park, Md.
