Jeff Goldsmith on Finally, California wakes up!

California voters have finally gotten to the bottom of their dysfunctional politics. For the last two decades, the California primary election system has sent the wacko fringes of both parties to Sacramento to make their state work.  It hasn’t worked.  The Dems were captured by the public employee unions and the Pacific Heights/Berkeley Hills 60’s fringe and the Reps captured by the Birch Society and Flat Earth people.   The result:  Greece on steroids, “Baghdad by the Bay”, an ungovernable, bile-ridden mess.  

Yesterday, California voters used direct democracy to end this system. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/us/politics/10prop.html?hp.  They voted to create an  open primary where any voter can vote in the primary and the two top vote getters (of either or any party) face each other in the general election.  This makes it actually possible for non-prisoners of their parties radical factions to make it in front of the voters and present a (perhaps) rational case for change. Wonder if it’s too late for California to avoid defaulting on its bonds, and creating yet another “sovereign” debt crisis. 

Unfortunately, since our national political system is headed in the same direction, it might take a revolution to break our two broken national political parties stranglehold on Congress.