When you look at the big picture of California as it exists now, this goofball didn't have a chance to be elected governor of California. A Hezbollah Arab would have had a better chance being elected mayor of Tel Aviv.

Looks like Jerry Brown just caught a lucky break. When Newsom entered the race, many thought he would have the inside track on the nomination, but he just failed to rise to the occasion.

To be fair, I consider Brown to be one of the more innovative policy makers out there. When he was governor back in the 1970's, he was on the cutting edge. I am particularly impressed with political leaders who can combine fiscal discipline and balanced budgets with relatively progressive policies that are not austere in nature. Budgets many times become political footballs, thus making the policy making process more contentious than it normally would. In CA and in other states with large and diverse constituencies, that's a particularly big problem, given the labyrinth nature of special interest politics there. That's a trick that most politicians can't pull off, but Brown did it well during a period of difficult economic circumstances.

The key question is, is he still up to the job? Given the state's highly Democratic profile, we might just find out. Whoever the Dems nominate will likely win the general election, as the Republicans have very weak numbers in the state right now.

Newsom isn't perfect, but he's high energy, practical, and most importantly, represents some fresh blood at the state politics level, where California is pretty broken right now.

I'm not sure that a retread governor - which it looks like we'll be getting in the form of Jerry Brown - is what we need.

I'm sorry to see Newsom drop out.