A funny thing happened on the way to the (Kia) Forum. The media has begun to take notice of the results emerging from decades of Democrat rule in the Golden State. And suddenly, California dreaming looks a lot more like California screaming – and even the lockstep media can’t ignore it.
Democrats have only themselves to blame, not just for the disaster they have made of the state but also in providing the catalyst for the national spotlight on it. In the gubernatorial race, a flood of high-profile Democrats jumped into the jungle primary – also a Democrat innovation – while Republicans had more discipline and kept it to two main candidates, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco. The possibility and near-probability of a vote split on the Left made the potential for a Hilton-Bianco runoff so novel and interesting that the national media couldn’t resist it. And with that spotlight on California comes scrutiny over just how badly Gavin Newsom and two generations of Democrat-only leadership have ruined the state.
Today, Axios takes particular notice of what it calls “the ultimate paradox of Democratic rule,” which the rest of us would call the utterly predictable results. Axios also links the high-profile mayoral race in Los Angeles, with the context of failures in every aspect of governance:
The two most consequential races in California have devolved into twin spectacles, with years of visible dysfunction hollowing out Democrats’ case for competent leadership.
Why it matters: California is the ultimate paradox of Democratic rule. A state of immense wealth, innovation and cultural power is increasingly unable to deliver the basics of housing, public safety and disaster response.
The big picture: Those failures have been building for years.
- But COVID and last year’s catastrophic fires have transformed long-simmering frustration with California governance into a visceral public indictment of the people running the state — one now playing out in the races for governor and Los Angeles mayor.
These failures have indeed been building for years, but the national media has never given it much notice until now. The Protection Racket Media has given Gavin Newsom in particular a pass for it despite his antics as an absentee governor. The media loves to feature him as a Temu Trump and a podcaster while almost literally playing Nero while Los Angeles burned last year. Newsom’s COVID policies turned out to be disastrous, too, so bad in fact that he got caught several times violating them for his own personal desires.
Hellbound and Down 