Remember how the newspapers (led by the LA Times) ran a personal smear campaign against Arnold Schwarzenegger, starting with reprinting a 25-year-old interview with a French magazine, to the point of going out to find women to make allegations of sexual misconduct against him only a few days before the election. (http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1001arnoldwomen-ON.html)
Remember how the newspapers ran endless stories about the fact that Arnold's father was a Nazi... a fact over which Arnold has no control. (http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/2003-08-24-arnold-father_x.htm)
Remember how ABC News created stories about Arnold praising Adolf Hitler, deliberately changing the words "But I didn't admire what he did with it" to "and for what he did with it" after the words "I admired Hitler for instance because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for his way of getting to the people and so on." (http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2003/10/03/20031003_012605_mattaa.htm)
Remember how the newspapers left out the rest of that 25-year-old interview: "Yes, in Germany they used power and authority but it was used in the wrong way," Mr. Schwarzenegger said, according to Mr. Butler. "But it was misused on the power. First, it started having, I mean, getting Germany out of the great recession and having everybody jobs and so on and then it was just misused. And they said, let's take this country, and so on." Mr. Schwarzenegger concluded: "That's bad." (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/04/national/04BOOK.html)
Remember the vicious attacks against Arnold by groups such as moveon.org, which has embarked on email and television smear campaigns telling people "if you have a wife, daughter or mother, you cannot vote for this man". Remember that they got their name from their campaign against the impeachment of Clinton, claiming that it was "all about sex" (it was all about LYING, actually), that a person's sex life was his or his own business, and that we should all just "move on". (http://www.moveonpac.org/moveonpac/)
Remember which Democratic Presidential candidates for the '04 election (not to mention Bill and Hillary Clinton) endorsed Gray Davis and (by extension) his tactics. (Hint: ALL)
Remember all these vicious backstabbing gutter political tactics. It won't be hard. You're going to see all these tactics and more directed against President Bush over the coming year. If you think the attacks on him have been bad since the Democrats began seriously trying to destroy him after the liberation of Iraq, "you ain't seen nothin' yet".
The anti-Arnold smear campaign, I predict, will backfire against Davis and his slimy cronies, sweeping Arnold into the Governor's mansion tomorrow on a wave of indignation.
Likewise, the more vicious the attacks against President Bush, the better I sleep at night. As I said, this California recall election is a precursor of next year's Presidential election. All the vitriol of the Democrats is going to backfire against them in the national race as well.