Derek, nobody thinks that the usual activities that Schwartzenegger partook of during the 70s in Venice, CA will, by themselves, hurt him at the polls. His apparent admission to having group sex in a gym locker-room and the widely known fact that he openly smoked pot brings a kind of ho-hum reaction. Of course, some voters don't admire people who undertake such behavior, and it's likely to blunt their enthusiasm. And, if the number of such behaviors were to multiply -- and his statement that things he did were ludicrous, crazy and outrageous makes one think they may well multiply -- we might observe the classic smear campaign, the kind of campaign that, actually, our sitting governor has shown himself very adept at winning (much to the chagrin of politicians like Dianne Feinstiein).

Classic smear requires a multiplicity of charges, which individually do not hurt the candidate; however, when the charges become so numerous that the candidate cannot sweep the image of themselves participating in said behavior with a single sound-bite quote, this blunts enthusiasm. This typically does not much affect support in the polls, but it does affect voter turnout of the candidates' supporters. So, we would see little dip in Arnie's numbers, but the likelihood that his supporters would materialize at the polls goes down.

Arnie is extremely vulnerable to the smear attack. He clearly has material to work with. The only defense is an efficient PR machine which can cold-water each accusation as it surfaces -- unless he wants to counter by going on the attack, and I suspect it's going to be difficult for him to find as much dirt on Gray Davis or Cruz Bustamante. Of course, he does have the material of disgust with those in power -- and that has carried much enthusiasm thus far.

More likely, though, is Arnie will start taking on classic Dem constitituencies before the election -- forced there by calls for him to "state where he stands on the issues" -- like unions and lawers, which already are working against him, and this will erode the euphoric support he has now.

Final note: pointing out the political trends does not an apologist make. To be an apologist, you'd have to make statements like I do about Gray Davis: that the man, while no Svengali, is not ultimately responsible for our present budget crisis. Krugman states that the $9B energy swindle by energy producers -- a figure which does not include the futures contracts at inflated prices CA is paying out now -- was endorsed last Friday by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Republicans do good for Energy producers to fleece all in their path. Sure, Davis could have avoided this if he led a Napoleonic campaign of mass slaughter of energy producing companies, and installed extra-legal systems to defeat deregulation, but he would have been afterwards sent to Elba. We asked for this dereg, we got it, even though a simple analysis shows that the economic design of deregulation was a license for mass economic rape.