> And, at least it's probably saved us from having President Schwarzenegger...
Schwarzenegger's lack of a strong political base is a bigger factor there, which is why his only route to getting in office in the first place was exploiting celebrity in a way that would not work in a normal election in the Gray Davis recall that was largely funded by Darryl Issa as a way to get Darryl Issa into the Governor's mansion (California's recall system combines a majority vote to remove with a simultaneous plurality vote on the replacement-to-be-installed-if-the-removal-succeeds, and has no primary election to narrow the field of candidates -- this makes celebrity name recognition a bigger factor than in regular elections, and allows [as in the Davis recall] a replacement candidate to "win" with less votes than were cast to retain the incumbent.)
He did manage to get reelected, but the calculus of a party turning on their own incumbent is different than that of getting behind a candidate that isn't an incumbent.
Even if an unusual thing happened in national politics that enabled that approach to work again (there's no equivalent "Presidential recall", but the 2016 Republican Primary shows that even with a regular primary, sometimes forces align in unusual ways), the "celebrity political outsider" thing really only works for one major office, and Arnold had already used his shot on that. After that, he was a veteran politician that still lacked a strong base even in his own party.
Schwarzenegger's lack of a strong political base is a bigger factor there, which is why his only route to getting in office in the first place was exploiting celebrity in a way that would not work in a normal election in the Gray Davis recall that was largely funded by Darryl Issa as a way to get Darryl Issa into the Governor's mansion (California's recall system combines a majority vote to remove with a simultaneous plurality vote on the replacement-to-be-installed-if-the-removal-succeeds, and has no primary election to narrow the field of candidates -- this makes celebrity name recognition a bigger factor than in regular elections, and allows [as in the Davis recall] a replacement candidate to "win" with less votes than were cast to retain the incumbent.)
He did manage to get reelected, but the calculus of a party turning on their own incumbent is different than that of getting behind a candidate that isn't an incumbent.
Even if an unusual thing happened in national politics that enabled that approach to work again (there's no equivalent "Presidential recall", but the 2016 Republican Primary shows that even with a regular primary, sometimes forces align in unusual ways), the "celebrity political outsider" thing really only works for one major office, and Arnold had already used his shot on that. After that, he was a veteran politician that still lacked a strong base even in his own party.