California: A Case Study in Liberal Power Grabs

This week, California officially became the sixth state to legalize recreational marijuana.  California voters had voted to legalize marijuana in 2016 but the law did not go into effect until this week.  Based on her romanticizing coverage of a marijuana bus in Colorado on New Year’s Eve, I think CNN reporter Randi Kaye must be excited.   

 

This week, California officially became a sanctuary state; proudly defying Federal immigration law.  The geniuses in Sacramento apparently learned nothing from the tragic death of Kate Steinle, which perfectly highlighted the consequences of sanctuary jurisdictions.  In the wake of California’s newfound sanctuary state status, official-looking satirical welcome signs appeared all over the state saying “Felons, Illegals and MS13 welcome!  Democrats need the votes.”  While these signs definitely triggered the left-wing politicians who support open borders, those signs definitely possess a higher degree of truth than many of those disingenuous politicians would like to admit.         

 

While Texas has roughly the same Hispanic population as California, the two states have vastly different voting patterns; therefore another variable must explain California’s sharp left turn: the behavior of white voters.  As Ann Coulter explained in her book Adios America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole, “Hispanics in Texas are no different from Hispanics in California: Both bloc vote for the Democrats by about 60 to 75 percent.  The difference is: White Texans overwhelmingly vote Republican, where as White Californians split their vote.  In 2012, whites were 55 percent of the California electorate, but they voted only 53 percent for Romney.  That same year, whites were 56 percent of the Texas electorate—but they voted 80 percent for Romney.”  By 2016, the white share of the vote had dwindled to 48 percent in California and whites supported Hillary over President Trump, 50 to 45 percent; explaining the Republican’s poor performance.  Considering the Republicans’ strength with white voters in Texas, the Democrats certainly have their work cut out for them if they want to win the second most populous state in the union.  Conning Congressional Republicans into passing a DACA amnesty will make that task a lot easier.

 

After the 2010 elections, California initiated a top-two primary system, where all candidates run together on the same ballot in the primary election, regardless of party.  The top two candidates with the highest number of votes then face each other in the general election, which effectively serves a runoff.  In 2016, voters in California had a choice between two Democrats as they picked their next Senator.  In addition, voters in seven overwhelmingly Democratic Congressional Districts had a choice between two Democrats for their representative in Congress.  It looks like the same thing may happen in both statewide races in California this year.  In the Senate, octogenarian Senator Dianne Feinstein may end up losing her seat this year; but not to a Republican.  Liberal Democrats have recruited State Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin Deleon to run against her.  The general election match-up could very well feature a Feinstein-Deleon contest, with no Republican.  A similar situation played out last year in California’s 17^th Congressional District, where Democrat Ro Khanna defeated longtime incumbent Mike Honda, also a Democrat.

 

The open gubernatorial race will almost certainly feature Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who served as Mayor of San Francisco from 2004 until assuming the Lieutenant Governorship in 2011.  During his tenure as mayor, Newsom briefly turned San Francisco, arguably the most socially liberal city in the country, into a sanctuary city for gay marriage at a time when no jurisdiction had voted to legalize it.  Polling indicates that he may face Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in November.  No wonder the Democrats have a lead in the generic ballot; if many races in the country’s largest state will not even have a Republican candidate, that will certainly contribute to a Democratic lead in the popular vote nationwide.  Even if the Democrats win the popular vote in this year’s midterms, that does not necessarily mean they will walk away with a majority of seats.    California will hold its primary on June 5.  After the results of the primary get tallied, we will have a much better idea of whether or not the California Republican Party has gone permanently extinct at the state level.        

 

The explosion of the foreign-born population in California has given the Democrats an enormous electoral advantage in the Golden State.  This study from the Center for Immigration Studies shows that 55 percent of immigrant citizens identify with the Democratic Party while just 31 percent identify as Republicans. Immigrant non-citizens favor the Democratic Party by a nearly 5-1 margin while Latinos as a whole favor the Democrats by a 2-1 margin.    Given this data, the 2016 Presidential Election results in California should not have come as that much of a surprise.  Despite coming out on top in the 2016 Presidential Election, President Trump did not even capture one-third of the vote in the nation’s most populous state, which gave Hillary Clinton her third best showing nationwide.  California alone caused Hillary Clinton to win the popular vote.  Of the 53 congressional districts in the state, President Trump only won seven.  Even the “Six Californias” proposal would not have yielded Republicans much electoral success.  President Trump would have only won two of the six proposed states; both of them by very narrow margins.

 

California’s high-tax policies as well as its promotion of homelessness make it a very unattractive state for people who do not fall into the category of the “very rich” (who can afford the taxes) or the “very poor” (who get government handouts) that Mitt Romney talked about in his Presidential campaign.  Thus, California has seen a mass exodus among its middle class.  Shankar Singam, an advocate for “Calexit” actually bragged about the middle class leaving the state, telling Tucker Carlson that their absence will make room for the “new wave of immigrants.”  He also bragged that “when our middle class does move out to Texas and Colorado they are taking their values out to the United States.  If you look at Texas, in fact, all the major cities Californians are going to they are turning blue.  And soon enough Texas will be a blue state.”  The thought of that should scare everybody.

 

On her TV show last night, Laura Ingraham posed a question, “Was it smart to explode our foreign population, not through a smart merit-based immigration system, but through the ludicrous policy of chain migration?”  While many Americans would respond to Ingraham’s question with an unequivocal “no”, the Democrats would respond to her question by saying “absolutely.”  Thanks to the explosion of the foreign-born population in California, the Democrats control every statewide elected office, 27 of 40 seats in the State Senate, 53 of 80 seats in the State assembly, and 39 of the 53 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.  The Democrats hope they can replicate their success nationwide by making the rest of the country’s demographics more like California.  The United States Census predicts that the Democrats’ dreams may become a reality by the year 2050.

 

California’s overregulation prompted actor Rob Schneider to switch his party affiliation from Democratic to Republican.  He told The Blaze that “the state of California is a mess, and the supermajority of Democrats is not working.  I’ve been a lifelong Democrat and I have to switch over because it no longer serves the people of this great state.”  The Democrats don’t seem to mind losing the support of people like Schneider, as they have successfully spent the past thirty years assembling a replacement electorate of an enormous magnitude.    

 

As Ronald Reagan, who could never get elected Governor of California today, once said, “If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to.  This is the last stand on earth.”  Giving the Democrats a permanent electoral majority nationwide would ensure a loss of freedom as they will work to expand the power of the state as soon as they take power.  California serves as an important warning sign to the American people what will happen under a nationwide Democratic supermajority. Those looking for other warning signs might want to take a look at the big cities, many of which have not had Republican mayors in decades.  Congressional Republicans, if you want the rest of the country to absorb all of the worst characteristics of California and many of the nation’s largest cities, then by all means vote to give blanket amnesty to all 800,000 of the DACA kids with nothing in return.  If you want America to remain a free and prosperous country that many across the world dream of moving to, think twice before swallowing the Democrats’ poison pill.