That'll teach me. Less than 24 hours after posting what I thought were no-brainers about the California recall election yesterday, I'm already wrong.

Let's go through the list one by one:

Prediction 1: No matter what the outcome, most people won't get what they want.

Okay, this is a little hard to know for sure, but Davis got the boot, so that's probably what most people want. Arnold didn't get a majority (duh!), but the vote was much less fractured than I had expected, so I think we can say that at least a plurality got what they wanted.

Prediction 2: Current governor Gray Davis will get far more votes (in the form of votes to not recall him) than any of the 135 potential replacements. This doesn't mean he'll win.

Again, I was expecting the votes among the replacement candidates to be far more fractured, and the margin of victory to be much less than it was. As it happens, the number of votes for Arnold (sorry, but I can't spell Schwarzenegger) was comparable to, and actually a little greater than, the number of votes for keeping Davis in office. Believe it or not, he may actually have something of a mandate here.

Prediction 3: Even if Arnold wins the election, his political career stops here. No more comparing him to Ronald Reagan: The Gipper beats The Groper any day.

Arnold can't run for President, since he's not a natural-born U.S. citizen. How the next couple of years play out will be interesting, given our experience in Minnesota with our own celebrity governor. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I actually think Jesse Ventura did a good (though colorful) job as governor, but in the end, he had a hard time dealing with the fact that in politics, everything you do can and will be used against you.

I'm curious to see how this last-minute scandal plays out over the next few months and into the next election in 2006.

Prediction 4: It will be a long time before there's another recall election in California. The only people coming out winners are the stand-up comedians.

Clearly the comedians won the election.

Unfortunately (and I say this as someone who thinks Arnold will probably do a good job), the forces pushing for the recall also won.

This is unfortunate, because nothing succeeds like success, and this victory will encourage more of the same in the future. Rather than fewer circuses like this, I'm afraid we'll see more. If it worked once, might as well try it again.