Will “Conservatives Take Back California?”
There is a Facebook group called “Conservatives Take Back California,” which I find rather amusing. Here are a few reasons why they won’t come anywhere close to achieving their goal, at least within the lifetimes of anyone living here today.
Let’s begin by admitting that all of these points are generalities and as such, admit of clear exceptions. Not all movie stars are progressives; you will find an occasional Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, or Sylvester Stallone.
Sheer Volume of Quality Higher Education. California has over 750 higher education institutions, including public universities, private colleges, community colleges, and vocational schools.
The nine campuses of the University of California alone have over 300K students, 26K faculty, 194K staff members, and 2.5 million alumni.
How many UC professors support Trump? Four? There is a huge correlation between voters’ education level and repudiation of Trump and his values of hate, corruption, authoritarianism, anti-education, etc.
Environmentalism. California ranks #1 in the nation in terms of things like college graduates with environmental science degrees, pro-environment policies, and the development of clean technology. California (along with Texas with its immense wind resources) leads the country in terms of MWs of renewable energy installed.
Conservatives, at least those of today, are doing everything they can to inflict damage to solar and wind energy, most notably via Trump’s cancelling tax credits for both these technologies. The GOP views environmentalism generally and climate change mitigation in particular as something for woke socialists. They also believe (without evidence) that the scientists in these fields are corrupt.
Precious few Californians vote for the party that supports fossil fuels and accepts enormous campaign contributions from Big Oil.
Prosperity. California has the largest GDP in the Unites States. If it were a country, it would be the fourth largest economy on Earth, behind the U.S., China, and Germany.
Of the 3400 venture capital firms in the United States, 2400 of them are in California.
A great deal of this economic success is cutting-edge technology. Though we think about Facebook (Meta), Google, Apple, Intel, Nvidia, etc., this legacy goes back to the establishment of Hewlett-Packard, Fairchild, and several others in the late 1930s.
We need to compare this triumph in prosperity to Trump’s tariffs, an instrument which often provides short-term gain, but invariably causes retaliation, and has historically hurt both American workers and consumers. In addition, we have a variety of other economic policies that experts regard as erratic and misguided.
Entertainment. California is known as the entertainment capital of the world, by virtue of its stature in film, television, and music. As mentioned above, there are exceptions, but most people in entertainment attained their positions via their emotional sensitivity, and therefore tend to reject Donald Trump’s indifference to human suffering, not to mention his overt criminality.
Conservatives have a solid grasp on states like West Virginia and Alabama, which are known for their racism, poverty, and ignorance. They could get a grip on Mars or Venus before they could make a serious dent in California.
