WE'LL JUST COME right out and say something that thousands of liberal, progressive, and independent voters have been thinking but almost nobody wants to mention out loud: the recall election is not entirely bad.

Yes, the right wing of the Republican Party, led by Rep. Darryl Issa, financed the effort that forced the Oct. 7 election. Yes, Gov. Gray Davis was elected fair and square just a year ago, defeating a Republican candidate. Yes, the recall makes California look even more like a state full of lunatics and, more important, has damaged the state's credit rating and the local economy.

But all the Democratic Party's denunciations of the effort ignore an important point: Davis brought this on himself, and the real message that the recall sends to the nation is that politicians, particularly Democrats, need to be more in touch with and accountable to their core constituencies.

Davis, as we've pointed out (Editorial, 7/30/03), has turned the governor's office into a giant cash machine, with every big-business interest in the state handing over huge campaign contributions and then lining up for special favors. That attitude paralyzed him during the crucial moments of the energy crisis, when he refused to take on the giant energy companies and instead put the state in hock for billions of dollars in long-term contracts. It's caused him to put the brunt of the budget cuts on education and social services (instead of reducing spending on prisons, for example, or raising taxes on the wealthy). It's led him to ignore the pressing problems with the state's revenue-collections system, starting with Proposition 13. And it's left him with few friends in the traditional Democratic constituencies that he so desperately needs to fight the recall.

The very fact that the recall is on the ballot, and Davis is fighting for his political life, should serve as a warning to mayors, governors, and legislators in California and all over the nation: the voters are increasingly sick of pay-to-play politics, and you ignore that anger at your eternal peril.

So all the plaintive calls to abolish the recall (which was, after all, a solid progressive-era reform) are nonsense: the recall is, and should be, a powerful tool of direct democracy. In California, the process could use some reform – the legislature should look at ways to ensure some sort of runoff or require a majority vote for a new governor, and possibly put that election on a separate ballot. But there's no reason to get rid of this fundamental right.

That said, the first issue voters will face Oct. 7 is whether Davis's failures as a governor are so profound that he deserves to lose his job just one year into a four-year term. And on that count, the answer is pretty clearly no.

Recalling a governor is serious business. The reform that gave voters that right (along with the referendum and initiative) came at a time when Southern Pacific Railroad ran California and handpicked the state's top politicians. Corruption was rampant. And while Davis is deeply beholden to special interests and has made some terribly policy decisions, he hasn't been such a disaster that he should be tossed out just 11 months after an election and replaced with almost anyone – and the recall ballot could replace him, for example, with an actor who has no political experience at all and no visible platform or plans. Voting yes on the recall doesn't make much sense for a state in the depths of a serious recession. We don't like Davis much, and we didn't endorse him last fall (we went with Green Party candidate Peter Camejo), but we don't think anyone has made the case to recall him from office.

No reasonable analysis of the election can stop there – because the polls show the recall still leading by sizable percentages, and there's a good chance Davis will lose his job. So it's crucial that everyone, even those who strongly oppose the recall, votes for a replacement candidate. Our choice is Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante.

It's not an easy call. Bustamante, the former assembly speaker, is a moderate Democrat from the Central Valley who has always been a friend to agribusiness. Nobody ever suggested he was much of a progressive – for example, he strongly supports the death penalty. (Mike Davis reports on the Web site Tomdispatch.com, a project of the Nation Institute, that Bustamante once said he would be willing to execute a "hardened criminal" as young as 13.) But to his credit, Bustamante did what no other prominent Democrat would do: he stood up to Davis and the party leadership and entered the race. To his credit, he's at least talking about modifying Prop. 13 and increasing taxes on commercial property as well as raising income taxes on the very rich. And he might provide a rallying point to get Latino voters, who make up a potentially huge chunk of the electorate, to the polls.

Two candidates, Camejo and Arianna Huffington, are seeking the progressive vote, and we're glad to see them both in the race. Camejo has good, clear, specific ideas for the state, and Huffington has performed well in the debates. We think Camejo, whose political stands have been more consistent, is the better of the two, and he'd make a fine governor. A strong showing by the Greens could be especially powerful in an election where as little as 25 percent could be a winning total.