I guess the Bush-mandate question is tricky. Californians explicitly renounced the policies of the Bush administration by electing Boxer with a very wide margin. New York voted to keep Senator Charles Schumer in his seat 71 to 25 percent over the Republican challenger. It is pretty tough to declare a mandate when two of the big three (New York, California and Texas) do not agree with you. And by a resoundingly large margin.Little noticed in this month's election was that the nation's third biggest vote getter, behind only President Bush and John Kerry was Sen. Barbara Boxer a fiery California Democrat who proudly wears her liberalism on her sleeve.
In a campaign year when the GOP picked off most of its Democratic targets, Boxer sailed to a third Senate term Nov. 2 with 6.4 million votes, 200,000 more than Kerry got in the state. Ralph Nader's total for the country: 407,000 votes.
This from a San Francisco Bay Area liberal who's made a habit of exasperating the GOP, whether taking on the Pentagon over a $7,600 coffee pot — a fight she waged as a junior congresswoman two decades ago — or leading opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
"She's certainly one of the most liberal senators in the country, and one that Republicans love to hate," said Ken DeBow, a political scientist at California State University, Sacramento. "And they can't come close to touching her."
Boxer's success has several explanations: California's electorate leans stubbornly Democratic, even as voters nationwide hand victories to the GOP. She finished with 58 percent of the vote in a state where Democrats make up 43 percent of registered voters (35 percent are Republicans and 18 percent are independents).
Source: Yahoo!
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