Today's Fresh Meat

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

First with the big news. If for some reason you haven't heard yet, Barack Obama gained enough delegates yesterday to credibly claim the Democratic nomination for president of the United States,and if recent polls are any indicator, Californians are ready toembrace his candidacy and take the fight to John McCain. HillaryClinton stopped short of conceding, but her remarks gave everyindication that she was preparing for a new chapter of her politicallife.

Back here in California, Proposition 98, the deceptive anti-tenant,anti-environment, anti-local control ballot measure opposed byFeinstein, Schwarzenegger, the Sierra Club and the Chamber ofCommerce—not a group you're likely to see together all that much—went down in flames, with 61 percent voting no, the Los Angeles Times reports. A benign alternative that addresses real eminent domain issues, Proposition 99, was ahead.

In what became one of the hottest legislative races in the entire state, Assemblymember Mark Leno defeated incumbent State Sen. Carole Migden,who was forced into third due to a strong showing by former MarinAssemblymember Joe Nation, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Therace had been expected to be closer between Leno of San Francisco andNation, but Leno ended up winning by a comfortable 13-point spread dueto higher than expected turn-out in the city.

In another hot race that even generated coverage from the New York Times this week, hot-tempered ideologue Tom McClintock defeated the more moderate—and like my colleagues, I use this term lightly—Doug Osefor the GOP Congressional nomination in a conservative mountaindistrict, the Associated Press reports. During the campaign, McClintockpromised never to seek earmarks for the district, a position that puthim at odds with many local elected officials. McClintock's nominationalso says a lot about where the GOP is ideologically.

There's more...