Winning the Battle only to Lose the War

On Saturday the state treasurer won the Democratic Party endorsement with 67.3% of the vote. But as in many other things political that victory may foretell some quite different results. Here are three possible alternative scenarios -

1) The Endorsement Strengthens the Governor - this was clearly a win for the left side of the party. Westley did work with the Governor on a couple of projects and is clearly more pragmatic than Angelides. But all those democrats in the state who would be turned off by Angelides stridency will have no place to go in November. The Governor needs to continue to look like a moderate alternative to Angelides and he will win those voters.
2) Westley may be able to use this - clearly this was a victory for the unions who support Angelides. To the extent that the democratic party will include voters who are not sympathetic to the union causes, Westley has an issue. He has the money to press it forward.
3) It strengthens Angelides - Angelides has a united party, albeit with about a third who did not support him but will be brought back in November, and he moves forward and wins in June and November.

Of the three, I have listed them in their most likely order. Clearly, this gives the Governor an opening. While California has voted increasingly to the left on a number of issues, candidates who promise to raise taxes have not been successful. I doubt whether the agenda advanced by Angelides will be popular with more than 50% of the voters. The Governor will also have the advantage of being able to be subtle about the power of the unions. Most of the recent Field and PPIC polls express Californian's increasing concern of the public employee unions - they don't like the pension programs that are throwing cities into bankruptcy, they don't like the schools and they don't like the deterioration of infrastructure. Angelides simply does not have an answer to that. He then becomes increasingly popular to a minority of voters.

By the way, the LA Times poll showed Westly up by 13 points on Angelides and the stronger candidate to take on the Governor. But evidently among the democratic hard core such data does not seem to matter.