State Will Be a Footnote in the 2004 Elections

The recent elections represent a disaster for California. We will have no senators in the majority party. We will have no committee chairmanships and no committee majority members. Likewise, the overwhelming portion of our members of Congress also will be in the minority. Voters of California have moved us to the left, away from the rest of the nation. We will be left to stew in our own “deficit juices” with no expectations of help from the federal government. What is just as alarming is that Republicans outpolled Democrats in the congressional races around the nation.

This means that in 2004, California will be a footnote in the national elections. Republicans do not need us. As a Republican, I am alarmed by what is happening in our state, by how far and how fast we are distancing ourselves from the rest of the nation.

We are faced with either growing deficits, higher taxes or both. Over-regulation is causing businesses to leave for greener pastures, across state lines. We need to seriously think about whether we are drifting in the right direction.

Steve Reich

Oxnard

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Ross Baker must be talking about a different Democratic Party from the one I abandoned five years ago (Commentary, Nov. 12). The Democrats of the last few decades have become less and less, not more, liberal -- gutting the social safety net, doing the bidding of multinational corporations, increasing military spending every year, refusing to stand up for gay and lesbian rights to marry and serve in the military, going along on the failed, immoral war on drugs and in so many other ways doing a darn good imitation of Republicans. If Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt is a liberal, what’s the Green Party? Stalinist?

Abe Fabrizio

Long Beach

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It puzzles me why any thinking person would vote Republican. When you consider the GOP position on the environment, health care, unionization of working people and corporate welfare, it seems to me that support of Republican principles is simply anti-Earth and anti-humankind. The Democrats in Congress are not nearly the kind of leaders we need to create a cleaner world and peace and social justice, but at least the Democratic Party hasn’t been hijacked by Christian fundamentalists whose philosophy is first cousin to the Taliban’s.

Russ Nichols

Mt. Washington