Democrats do or die. (Comment).

HAVING lunch with some friends a couple of weeks a go, I casually mentioned the drive to recall Gray Davis and the prospect of having a new governor inside of a year by the name of Feinstein or Schwarzenegger.

I might as well have announced that Saddam Hussein was the new production head at Paramount. Ask folks about Bush or Iraq or Israel and they fork over their two cents. Ask them about Sacramento and you get quizzical looks.

Well, maybe no more. The recall movement is gaining steam, fast, thanks mostly to the $38 billion budget deficit that has Democrats pushing for higher taxes and Republicans pushing for more cuts. As of late last week, neither side was making much headway.

Meantime, the signatures calling for a recall vote keep piling up.

The whole thing vaguely resembles the Valley secession movement that was not taken very seriously by most anyone but the Daily News until the measure made it to the city ballot. Those neophyte secessionists were done in at that point by the other side's money and political acumen -- not to mention the requirement that the breakup had to be passed citywide, not just in the Valley. In the end, L.A. voters had little interest in making their city smaller, especially with scanty evidence that it would lower crime and taxes.

But just as the voting mechanics were stacked against the secessionists, this time they are stacked against Davis. If it were a simple yes-or-no confidence vote with no alternative candidate on the ballot, I'd put my money on Davis. Campaigning is the one thing this guy is good at (even if it's to keep his job) and I could imagine him laying out a "lunatics-running-the-asylum" scenario in the event of a successful recall.

Unfortunately for Davis, the ballot would not include just the recall but a selection of candidates in the event the recall gets through. For this, there would be no party delineation, which means that a handful of Democrats could split the vote and allow a Republican or independent to sneak in.

Someone like Ah-nold.

It's still early. Even if the recall ringleaders gather the necessary 900,000 or so signatures to qualify for a vote -- very likely at this point -- there's the question of when the vote will happen: as a special election in the fall or as part of the scheduled presidential primary election next March.

Republicans, of course, don't want to give Davis those three or four months to smooth over the budget mess and convince enough voters to give him another chance (not to mention the fact that more Democrats will likely come out for a primary election). For them, the sooner the vote the better. Better, too, for a novice like Schwarzenegger, who avoids a protracted campaign -- and with it, the risk of embarrassing exposes or dumb remarks.

Predictions are ridiculous at this stage, but it's hard to imagine the Democrats coming out of this unscathed. Davis is not likely to resign -- even for the sake of the party -- and even if the recall is turned back, he is destined to be an ineffectual lame duck. If Davis is ousted and a Democrat takes his place, the new governor will face the same old dysfunctional state government, and to make matters worse, he or she will be too beholden to the current leadership to rock the boat.

And if Davis is replaced by a popular Republican movie star? The White House powerbrokers must be smacking their lips about now.

Mark Lacter is editor of the Business Journal.