Just as it would be foolish to dismiss the future electoral prospects of Ahnold Ziffel in light of the last Tuesday's electoral debacle, so too would it be a mistake to draw too many comparisons with the comeback made by his ally and advisor, Pete Wilson, a dozen years earlier. In 1993, Wilson was:

1) an even more unpopular Governor; and
2) trailed the likely Democratic nominee, the State Treasurer (Kathleen Brown), by a significant margin.

Wilson, of course, came back the following year and won a landslide over Brown, who, besides being a scion of California's great political dynasty, was also a well-known public figure in her own right.

The big difference, however, is that Wilson had no career outside of politics. As such, he was pretty much defined by whether he could win public office, and once successful at that, whether he could win reelection. Other than his adoption of xenophobia as an electoral ideology, it would be hard to state what he stood for.

Ahnold, of course, has a life that doesn't revolve around winning the next election. He can always go back to Hollywood if things don't work out in Sacramento, or smoke cigars at his restaurant in Venice. He ran as a "reformer", and staked much of his political capital on the recent initiatives that the voters decisively defeated. With the defeat of Proposition 77, which sought to re-reapportion the districts legislators run in, the Democrats will continue to maintain their large majorities in both houses. California will remain a state of the deepest Blue variety until at least 2012.

He must now realize that even if he wins reelection next year, he will be little more than a figurehead, no different than the governor of Texas, with the ability only to veto and to occasionally make speeches. The agenda will be set by the Democrats in the state legislature, no matter how decisively he wins his own election next November. He knows that, and I suspect that's not why he got into politics.

I predict he won't run in 2006.