It is far too late for soon-to-be-ex-Gov. Gray Davis to convince anyone but the party faithful that he truly is a victim of a giant right-wing conspiracy.
But if he or any other California Democrat were to make that case convincingly, they might start by reading this piece in the UK Guardian. It's an attack on one of the most dearly loved of Republican Party principles, the belief that governments can and should pay private companies to do their work for them. As they say in Silicon Valley, it's a criticism that scales, all the way from energy politics to the U.S. Army's woes in Iraq.
The Guardian's US correspondent, Julian Borger, smartly talks about California's energy woes as an foreshadowing, not a contrast, to the Great Northeastern Blackout of '03. Davis didn't take that path when he spoke yesterday. In fact, the Davis administration has either been unwilling or unable to come up with any sort of decent arguments about exactly how they've been manhandled by the Republicans. It's not for lack of material -- has anyone noticed how the Department of the Interior keeps restricting the amount of water the state can pull from the Colorado River? -- so it's got to be for lack of trying.