Who exactly ARE those 33% of Americans still supporting Bush?

This guest post was written by Howie Klein.

I live in Los Angeles, in a neighborhood of single family homes with nice lawns and gardens. It's called Los Feliz and it's right off the 5 Freeway. Ethnically, the neighborhood is pretty diverse, one of the things that makes it so attractive. I don't think Republicans bother running in the area. I know one didn't challenge our congresswoman, Diane Watson (although that isn't because they approve of her impeccably progressive voting record); it probably has something to do with the fact Bush only managed to garner 16% of the voters against Kerry (an increase of 2% over what he managed against Gore). Not far down the 5 Freeway there are two very different districts that have long perplexed me-- the 42nd CD and the 44th CD, represented, respectively by Gary Miller, the single most extreme right wing congressman from California and by Ken Calvert, whose voting record isn't much different from Miller's.

Here's a description of the situation in CA-42 that I wrote last May:

CA-42 is a district of suburban sprawl snaking down from Chino, Diamond Bar and Rowland Heights through Brea and Yorba Linda to Mission Viejo. It has the highest percentage of married people in the entire state and it is very white bread (although 40% of the people living there are Hispanic and Asian). In 2004 Bush carried the 42nd with 62%. The district is so hopelessly conservative that no Democrat bothered to even file to run against extreme right-wing nutcase, Gary Miller, who has one of the 10 most far right voting records in the entire Congress, more extreme than Tom DeLay or Roy Blunt and more extreme than any of the California Republican dead-enders like Richard Pombo, John Doolittle, Duncan Hunter, Jerry Lewis, although, like them, he is a crooked self-server who uses his congressional power to enrich himself at the public's expense. The only times Miller is not busy being a Bush rubber stamp is when Bush's (and DeLay's) positions aren't steeped in a high enough degree of sheer Wingnutery for him. Hate to see a kook like this get off without even having to defend his pro-war, pro-Big Business, anti-environment, anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-Labor, anti-education, anti-health care, anti-human positions?

Since then Miller, like my congresswoman, faced no opposition to his re-election bid. Ken Calvert, once arrested for having sex in his car with a prostitute and more recently caught using his office to make sweet real estate deals for himself, had token opposition and won another term. A few weeks after writing about CA-42, this is what I wrote about the situation in CA-44:

Change has been a lot slower in CA-44. This district, sprawling through the endless suburbs of southern Orange County and western Riverside County is improving… but more slowly. Ask anyone in the district what the biggest problem is and they'll all be reading out of the same hymn book: development and the problems that come with development from overtaxed public services (like education), runaway local taxes, traffic, crushing corruption… And the 44th CD has been represented in Congress by a greasy former real estate speculator as sleazy as the day is long (or, in summer, short), Ken Calvert. A gross little porky-pig lookalike, he was once arrested-- as a congressman-- with a prostitute giving him head in his car. (Yes, yes-- he's as much for Republican "family values" as the rest of them and, like most of them, flatly refuses to honor his word to step down after 6 terms.)

Both are rated as Safe Republican districts. Bush took 62% against Kerry in CA-42 and 59% in CA-44. Neither district is walking distance from my house. I could get to either in less than an hour by car, even if the traffic is bad, as it often is. In fact, I have attributed the bad traffic to why these two districts are so different from my own. These are classic suburban/exurban commuter districts. At least one, if not both, adults in the family are commuting… for hours in miserable traffic. I think they listen to Hate Talk Radio on the way to work and on the way home. I think their brains have become addled from too much exposure to Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, O'Reilly.