Left Coast Replaces Northeast as America's Liberal Epicenter

I have always been convinced that the northeast is the most liberal part of the country.  In light of recent events, I have begun to rethink that opinion.

 

It appears as if the west coast, sometimes referred to as the left coast, has replaced the northeast as the bedrock of American liberalism.  For one thing, the states on the left coast have experienced population growth at a much faster rate than the states in the northeast.  The left coast has seen its representation in congress increase while states in the northeast have mostly been losing electoral votes after the most recent population counts.  As this map demonstrates, many of the counties on the left coast, especially in California, swung to the left in the 2016 election while most of the counties in the northeast swung to the right.  Four of the five of the states on the left coast, including Republican-leaning Alaska, have legalized marijuana.  Surprisingly, Hawaii is the only one of the Pacific coast states that has not yet legalized recreational marijuana.  California, Oregon, and Washington have legalized euthanasia; also known as assisted suicide.      

 

The Pacific Coast states, along with many less liberal states in the American west, are part of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.  Headquartered in San Francisco, The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has developed a reputation as the most liberal appellate court in the country.  Its rulings are frequently overturned by the Supreme Court.  Not surprisingly, liberals seeking to challenge President Trump’s travel ban flocked to the west coast, where they knew they could find judges happy to rule in their favor.    

 

In the past three presidential elections, Hawaii has given the Democratic Presidential Candidate the highest share of the vote besides the District of Columbia.  Currently, the Democrats hold all 25 seats in the State Senate and more than 90 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives.  Democratic Presidential candidates routinely carry every county in the state.  

 

In California, the Democrats have complete control over the state government, with overwhelming majorities in both houses of the California State legislature and a Democratic governor.  Last year’s Senate election in California featured two Democrats going head to head in the general election.  The California legislature has passed legislation that would make it a sanctuary state.  The bill still awaits a signature from Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown.  The state has also hired Former Attorney General Eric Holder to “assist with legal challenges over everything from immigration to environmental policies.”  Finally, a campaign has begun to start collecting signatures in hopes of putting the “Calexit” proposal on the ballot. This referendum will ask Californians whether or not they want to secede from the United States.  The idea has gained more support from the left since the election of Donald Trump as the 45^th President of the United States.  The Golden State’s departure from the union would probably make Republicans and conservatives in other states happy since California’s absence would make it much harder for Democrats to win national elections.  Even if Californians vote in favor of “Calexit”, secession would still require approval from two-thirds of members of both houses of Congress as well as three-fourths of state legislatures.  Polls show a majority of Californians currently oppose “Calexit.”                  

 

Oregon, another state where Democrats control both the Legislature and the Governor’s office, recently passed the most radical abortion law in the country.  Even as science continues to demonstrate that life begins at conception, this bill allows abortions throughout all nine months of the pregnancy for any reason.  If that’s not bad enough, insurance companies must provide them at no cost to the patient. In other words, taxpayers, many of whom think abortion is murder, will get to watch in horror as their tax dollars pay for the grisly procedure.   Like Obamacare, this bill received absolutely no Republican votes.  This “kill bill” will take effect January 1, 2018.  If only it did not take effect until January 1, 2019; so Oregonians would have a chance to throw the people who passed this POS bill out of office.  After all, Republicans only need to pick up three seats to flip control of the Oregon Senate and six seats to flip control of the House.  Just one month before the Oregon legislature passed the most radical abortion law in the country, Oregon became the first state to allow a third gender option on driver’s licenses.  Considering the fact that Oregon is part of the so-called “Unchurched belt”, which boasts some of the lowest church attendance rates in the country, the passage of such insane laws should not come as much of a surprise.  According to a 2009 Gallup poll, Oregon has a higher percentage of those identifying with “No religion, atheist, or agnostic” than any other state.  Therefore, Oregon’s secular progressives face little opposition to their radical agenda from the religious right.           

 

Washington is the only state on the left coast besides Alaska that is not under complete Democratic control.  Republicans and an Independent Democrat hold a narrow majority in the State Senate.  Democrats hold a bare majority in the House of Representatives.  The fight to declare President Trump’s temporary travel ban on seven terror-prone Muslim-majority countries unconstitutional began in the Evergreen State, led by the state’s ultra-liberal Attorney General Bob Ferguson.  Seattle-based Federal Judge James Robart sided with Ferguson, granting a temporary restraining order on the travel ban.  The City of Seattle, which dominates Washington’s politics, has showed off its progressive credentials by passing a bill that would incrementally raise the minimum wage to $15/hour.  Even when a study conducted by the University of Washington showed the harmful effects of raising the minimum wage, the ideologically blindSeattle City Council didn’t let facts get in its way.  It dismissed the results of the study as flawed and hired a UC Berkeley Professor who has previously written about the positive effects of raising the minimum wage to conduct his own study.

 

Not all of the people in the Pacific Coast states are ultra-liberals.  That’s why there has been a lot of talk over the years about breaking the Pacific Coast states into smaller states so that conservatives living outside of the big cities would not have to live under progressive tyranny.  These proposals include “Six Californias”, combining Southern Oregon with Northern California to create the state of “Jefferson” and splitting up Western and Eastern Washington.  Liberals should love these proposals; considering how much they dislike ideological diversity.  Then again, they do get a lot of satisfaction from bullying their political opponents into submission.  Whether these proposals ever come to fruition or not, the left coast has clearly overtaken the northeast to become the most liberal part of the country.