California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom predicted this week that the Republican Party will “will go into the waste bin of society.” It was an interesting comment, coming only a couple of weeks after his party’s presidential candidates appeared at California’s Democratic Party convention.
That convention showed why California is moving in a troubled direction. At that meeting, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper was actually booed by the delegates when he said “socialism is not the answer.”
The Democratic Party is California’s dominant, virtually unchallenged political bloc. This is a one-party state, which should alarm the populace. When power is concentrated in one group, policy is passed without contest, ruling eventually replaces representative governance, and political corruption can run freely.
We’ve seen what happens in America’s large urban centers with decades of one party dominance. From Detroit to Newark, single-party political control has “ruined some of our finest cities.”
Not all California Democrats are socialists or lean toward socialism. But Democratic voters and lawmakers strongly believe in the welfare state, which some conflate with socialism. Younger voters view the term socialism in a different light these days, seeing it as a “progressive” system, which seeks equality while struggling to erase discrimination, protect the environment, and advocate for justice. A socialist system produces irresolvable issues, many of which have manifested themselves in California.
Oakland and San Francisco, for instance, have much in common with other big American cities that have been rotting from the inside.
Oakland is ranked as the nation’s third-most dangerous city by Business Insider. An “out of control” crime wave is causing Home Depot to consider quitting the city, incidents of larceny more than doubled from 2008 to 2017, and “fear, racism and class division” is destroying it.
Oakland has been dominated by Democrats in the mayor’s office — no GOP mayor since John Reading left in 1977, at a time when the city was “becoming increasingly Democratic.”
Across the Bay, San Francisco is mired in human feces, a stubborn homeless problem, and its own crime wave, driven by a surge in rape, and property crimes. The last Republican mayor of San Francisco, George Christopher, left office in 1964, and “in the last century, there has not been a Republican majority on the” San Francisco Board of Supervisors, says Jason P. Clark, chairman of the San Francisco Republican Party.
Farther south, in Los Angeles, the homeless population increased 16 percent in the city over the last year, many are ill with medieval diseases, and rotting garbage has been piling up as if it’s a Third World metropolis. Democratic mayor. Democratic (14-1) city council. One would think voters in these cities would be tempted to take a chance on candidates with different ideas.
California’s problems are not confined to its big cities. The nation’s highest poverty rate, a public-employee pension wreck, unaffordable housing, raging wildfires, rising crime, hostility toward business, crumbling roads, high taxes, growing homelessness, and a fleeing middle class impact the entire state.
The rising inequality of California’s politics has tracked the decline. The Democrats’ Assembly majorities have increased from 52 out of 80 seats in 2010 to 61 seats today. In the Senate, their majorities have climbed from 25 out of 40 seats in 2010 to 28 today.
Don’t think that the lowlights of single-party rule will necessarily remain confined to California. What happens in this bellwether state too often doesn’t stay here, which is why Newsom can with confidence say the national GOP will “go the same direction” as the California GOP, which is to end up in the “waste bin of history.” He won’t say it, but we will: The rest of the country is enjoying a little schadenfreude for now, but California’s problems, without vigilance from the public, will eventually be America’s problems.
But don’t give up just yet. After an extended stretch of Democratic dominance, it’s maybe now dawning on Californians just how negligent the majority party has been. Among likely voters, the state legislature has a lower approval rating (34 percent) than President Trump (38 percent), a new survey found. The legislature’s approval rating in January was much higher at 46 percent.
Consistent with booing Hickenlooper for questioning socialism, California Democrats elected Rusty Hicks as their state party chairman. He was reportedly the safe, middle-of-the-road choice.
Yet upon his election, he said that as a union leader, “I believe in the collective. I don’t believe in the individual.”
Right there, Hicks uncovered the depravity of socialism while also explaining why things are so uneasy in California.
Kerry Jackson is a fellow with the Center for California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute, a nonprofit group advocating for limited government.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
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