Another day and another ride on California's recall roller coaster. ...

Gov. Gray Davis and his would-be successors campaigned Monday on the assumption that they have just two weeks to make their cases to voters, while an 11-judge federal appellate panel mulled whether the historic recall election will be held Oct. 7 or postponed five months.

It's dangerous, perhaps foolhardy, to prejudge federal appellate judges -- to speculate how they might rule based on how they question attorneys, since they love to needle lesser lawyers. Nevertheless, the "en banc" panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was decidedly more hostile to lawyers arguing for postponement.

The tone of the hearing bolstered speculation among legal handicappers that the panel is likely to overturn a three-judge panel that had blocked the Oct. 7 election, saying that the use of punch card voting machines could disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters. And were the "en banc" panel to reinstate the Oct. 7 date, it's highly unlikely that the U.S. Supreme Court would intervene, thus sparing itself the agony of revisiting the highly controversial 2000 decision that validated George W. Bush's election to the presidency.

If, therefore, Davis and the aspirants for his job do indeed have just two weeks to make their pitches, how are they doing?

Davis, it would appear, is doing a bit better in overcoming widespread anger with his performance. His "town hall meetings" and television ads have narrowed the pro-recall margin by a few percentage points, according to a new Public Policy Institute of California poll. But the pro-recall side still has a double-digit lead in the PPIC poll -- something reflected in other public and private surveys -- and PPIC poll director Mark Baldassare says in a statement that "distrust and anger remain white hot."

All polls have found that very few voters remain undecided on whether Davis should be dumped from office, which makes Davis' hill even steeper. If one applies the polling data to predictions of a high voter turnout, it means Davis, to survive, would have to persuade at least a half-million voters to do a 180-degree turnabout.

That brings up the second issue for voters: Who should replace Davis if he were to be ousted? Voters have 135 choices, but it's dead-certain that either Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante or Republican movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger would become governor should Davis be recalled. It's still uncertain which one would win a plurality, at least as long as the third-place candidate, Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock, remains an active campaigner.

In the PPIC poll and other public and private surveys, Bustamante and Schwarzenegger are tied at around 30 percent each, give or take a few points, while McClintock remains stuck in the low-and mid-teens and the others are trailing far behind and nearly a fifth of voters are still undecided.

Were McClintock to drop out and his support flow to Schwarzenegger, the one-time bodybuilder would be the prohibitive favorite. And there's heavy pressure on McClintock to do that because Schwarzenegger has solidified his standing as the semiofficial nominee of the state Republican Party.

McClintock feels the pressure, but insisted again Monday that "I'm in this race to the finish line" and attributed Schwarzenegger's GOP backing to "a certain herd instinct among pachyderms."

It's possible for Schwarzenegger to win even with McClintock in, as long as his support goes no higher -- a possibility enhanced by Bustamante's seeming inability to consolidate Democratic Party backing. The PPIC poll found that Bustamante is supported by just 49 percent of Democrats, almost identical to Schwarzenegger's GOP support.

It's evident that Schwarzenegger, after a rocky start, has improved his campaign skills and is moving up, while Bustamante has stalled on his ill-considered decision to take millions of dollars from casino-owned Indian tribes -- a move that was declared illegal Monday by a judge, even if the money is shifted to ads opposing Proposition 54.

And all of this heightens the importance of Wednesday's debate -- the only one in which Schwarzenegger has agreed to participate. That'll be another ride on the coaster.