San Jose Mercury News: Hope springs eternal in the hearts not just of people, but of political parties, and the hope of both California Democrats and Republicans today is that voters in the other party will desert, or at least not vote. Almost every election season gives cause for such hopes, which rarely emerge into reality. This year, Republicans fervently hope the fact that Democrat Jerry Brown over the summer ran the state's equivalent of a Rose Garden campaign for governor will cause many Democrats to leave the party and switch to GOP nominee Meg Whitman. Democrats, meanwhile, have no expectation that many Republicans will ever vote Democratic. But they always hope a lot of Republicans stay home, dissatisfied with the ideological or moral purity of their party's candidate.