Harold Meyerson

Henry Waxman's victory over John Dingell yesterday in the fight for the chairmanship of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee isn't the first time that Waxman has ousted a more senior member. Back in 1978, when Waxman had been a member of Congress for just four years, he unseated the more senior Richardson Preyer, a Democrat from North Carolina, as chairman of the Health Subcommittee of Energy and Commerce. In those days, Waxman raised tons of money from his affluent Westside L.A. district, which he donated to House Democratic candidates from around the country. For the past decade, Waxman hasn't been the fundraiser and donor he once was, but it will be interesting to look at what donations he may have made in the past several months.

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There are, in theory, two kinds of political realignments. The first occurs when major groups within the electorate alter some of their political sensibilities or discover that the political party that expresses their sensibilities isn't the one they've been voting for but another party altogether. The second occurs when a group that hasn't really been in the electorate at all enters it or at least greatly increases its numbers.

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Like popes, Los Angeles County supervisors have to win an election to land the job, but once in, they're sitting pretty. The last time there was a contested supervisor election, George Bush was president -- the Bush who didn't send U.S. forces into Baghdad.

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For those of you who follow such things, the reports of my impending severance from and by the Weekly are not exaggerated. For readers who developed a chemical dependency on me during the past 17 years in which I've been writing this column for the Weekly, I do appear every Wednesday on the op-ed page of the Washington Post. My work can also be found in the pages of The American Prospect (www.prospect.org), the Washington-based liberal monthly where I've worked for the past five years and where I'm taking the helm next week as executive editor. And all my work is glumped gloriously together on my own Web site, www.haroldmeyerson.com. (Note to editors: Yeah, it's not a word. What's it to you?)

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'TIS THE FINAL COLUMN, the last Powerlines, and I'd like to use it to think back and forward about the city I've reported on and marveled at and hectored and prodded for nearly two decades.

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PHIL ANGELIDES IS SO LEAN that it's hard to find a physical description of the Democratic gubernatorial nominee that doesn't include the word "gangly." With just under seven weeks until Election Day, he seems to be made of lead, a dead weight threatening to drag down other worthy Democrats and ballot measures to an undeserved defeat.

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