California.
Does that name conjure images of happy progressivism, multicultural bliss, and Democratic hegemony? Sometimes it seems like that; even if the Golden State isn’t a paradise of liberal ideas, it’s been on that path for some time.
Not so fast.
It wasn’t so long ago that a decent, functional Democrat was ousted by the machinations of the Right and defeated by a Republican media figure who was laughed at as a possibility for the governorship...in the state that is a model for progressive government.
Mind you, Arnold Schwarzenegger is no Donald Trump. He’s considerably more intelligent and reasonable than Orange Jesus, but that isn’t saying much. The point is, he beat a Democratic candidate in the figure of Cruz Bustamante to replace Governor Grey Davis, who had been neatly ousted through a perfect storm of political machinations combined with economic conditions. A Latino candidate, defeated in California, not long after the Latino population became the majority in Southern California.
Sound familiar?
And not only elected, but re-elected. Eight years of the Governator, in the heart of liberal-land.
Now, Bustamante and Davis are no Jerry Brown, that is true. But it wasn’t so long ago—still in my adult years (and I’m 47)—that California had elected a much more traditional Republican, George Dukmeijian. Before that, if you’re old enough, my home state elected the detestable Pete Wilson, a man who, like Rick Perry, had delusions of grandeur and ran for President.
It wasn’t too long ago that California also banned gay marriage through popular referendum.
Several years on now and Democrats have run the table with the major offices in the state, but keep in mind that the change to dominant liberal leadership wasn’t overnight.
As California goes, so goes the nation, it is said.
The question might be, how similar is California’s past to the nation’s present? Those years ago when Ahnold took the governorship, no one would have predicted Virginia turning blue. Or Texas’ slow turn and approach on purple. Did Democrats stay home and fail to elect Bustamante then? I’m not going to analyze that past election. I can mention that I’m a teacher, and that the Scholastic News election had never been wrong up until this year. Clinton won that child’s magazine vote, 53% to 39%. Sound familiar to any polls? As the final ballots are counted, we will see a more accurate reading of the true vote, not including voter suppression and depressed turnout.
So maybe some people are right, and Trump’s election and leadership in the next four years will snap much of the non-voting electorate out of their stupor, to repudiate him. We got Jerry Brown to replace Arnold, after all. Some people even said Brown was too old to run, or win.
Hopefully the naysayers will be repeating the same thing about Elizabeth Warren in four years, with the same results. We can only hope.
No, we can do more than hope. We can work.
