Bush One won California in 1988.
Like I said in the other thread, that was 20 years and 12 million (mostly blue) people ago. There may be some new swing states this year, but CA won't be one of them.
The Gore/Kerry margins are in line with our voting patterns here (now, not back then). The Dem nominee To Be Named will at least match them. No amount of collateral damage between Obama and Clinton could be enough to put California in play. The only scenario I can envision in which the GOP could possibly take CA in a general election would be to have a
very weak Dem opponent and run a Republican like Schwartznegger (moderate who looks left on social issues). Since a Republican like that will never, ever be able to win the Republican nomination we'll probably be blue for the foreseeable future.
I'm not surprised the polls show Obama doing better here in the general. Our primary was Super Tuesday, shortly after his campaign really took off. We also had a large number of early voters (more than 5% of the votes went to candidates who'd already dropped out). Considering Clinton was leading Obama in CA by 20% and 3 weeks later only won by 8%... he was trending up in a big way. Several of my friends who voted for her have since said they wished they voted for him. I'm not suggesting my friends are a microcosm of CA Democrats, but it's a frame of reference.
The swing states this year are primarily going to be the usual suspects (OH, FL, MI, etc) and states that were formerly solid red (VA, NC, CO, etc).