Posted on 11/10/2016 1:28:29 PM PST by Mark
In many ways, California is the antithesis of Donald Trump’s America.
While Trump rode a wave of anti-establishment, working-class white votes to the White House, California’s relatively diverse electorate, with well-established elites in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, roundly rejected him while passing liberal-favored ballot measures, including legalized recreational marijuana and a ban on plastic bags.
The presidency, House of Representatives and U.S. Senate are under Republican control. But in California, Democrats hold all statewide offices and majorities in the state’s congressional delegation and the state Legislature.
Trump takes a hard line on immigration, vowed to repeal Obamacare and has dismissed climate change as a hoax. Here, Democratic lawmakers approved drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants and made climate change a top priority, while Covered California is hailed as an example of the Affordable Care Act’s success.
In the wake of Trump’s stunning upset, California must find its place in his upcoming presidency and gird for what could be a series of clashes with Washington akin to GOP red state battles with Democratic President Barack Obama.
“From now on, opposition to Trump will be front and center of California Democratic strategy and tactics,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.
Trump’s win rattled California’s Democratic leaders. “Today, we woke up feeling like strangers in a foreign land,” began a joint statement from Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount, and state Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León, DLos Angeles.
They added: “We are not going to allow one election to reverse generations of progress at the height of our historic diversity, scientific advancement, economic output, and sense of global responsibility.”
However, California may not be as much of an outlier as it thinks. It was one of 10 states with 55 percent or more of its vote going to Clinton, said Renee Van Vechten, a political science professor at the University of Redlands.
News of Trump’s win led to protests on college campuses statewide. Police said at least 500 people swarmed on streets in and around UCLA, some shouting anti-Trump expletives and others chanting “Not my president!” Smaller demonstrations were held at University of California campuses and neighborhoods in Berkeley, Irvine and Davis and at San Jose State.
In Oakland, more than 100 protesters took to downtown streets. KNTV-TV reported that protesters burned Trump in effigy, smashed windows of the Oakland Tribune newsroom and set tires and trash on fire.
Last month, Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was destroyed. And raucous protests greeted Trump during his California visits earlier this year.
Some in the bluest state on Hillary Clinton’s map took to social media to call for secession. The hashtags #Calexit and #Caleavefornia trended on Twitter, recalling Great Britain’s Brexit from the European Union. “If Trump wins,” venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar wrote, “I am announcing and funding a legitimate campaign for California to become its own nation.”
Fight brewing
California is more ethnically diverse than the rest of the nation. In 2014, about 38 percent of Californians were Latino compared with 17 percent of U.S. residents, according to census figures.
It’s also more Democratic. Forty-five percent of the state’s voters are registered Democrats, while 32 percent of those surveyed in a nationwide September Gallup poll said they were Democrats.
Loren Collingwood, an assistant political science professor at UC Riverside, noted that while pro-Trump pockets exist in Inland areas, the Central Valley and counties near Nevada, Orange County, long a bastion of conservative politics, went for Clinton on Tuesday.
“In many ways, California has fought these national battles based on anti-immigrant antipathy and racial group threat, and has moved on,” Collingwood said. “America as a whole will engage this in a long, protracted battle for at least the next 20 years.”
Jennifer Walsh, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Azusa Pacific University, said Trump did well in areas that “suffered economic decline caused by declining manufacturing sectors and a reconfiguration of the economy that prefers a college-educated workforce. These factors are not significant in California’s economy.”
Collingwood predicted that California will fight the GOPcontrolled federal government like red states fought Obama on border security and Obamacare.
“Republicans will definitely go after health care (and) as a result many people will lose health care, but prices might also drop for others,” he said.
Instead of fighting climate change, “if anything the next administration will liberalize ... fossil-fuel industries as it tries to grow the economy in many of the regions that backed (Trump) – regions with extraction-based economies (unlike California),” Collingwood said.
Walsh said that if Trump follows through on his promise to build a wall on the Mexican border and deport undocumented immigrants en masse, “I would expect California officials to engage in political and legal efforts to thwart those efforts.”
Mark Peterson, a professor at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, expects the Trump administration to challenge sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants. “And my guess is that such places in California will push back, with potential consequences for federal funding,” he said.
Marcia Godwin, an associate professor of public admin-istration at the University of La Verne, thinks incentives to deal with climate change and funding for environmental initiatives such as the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument are on the chopping block in the Trump White House.
Godwin said there could be “less out-and-out defiance (of Trump) in favor of efforts to establish California as an alternative model for health services, education, services for immigrants, and a technology- based economy.”
The Associated Press and staff writer Gregory J. Wilcox contributed to this report.
A little Walking Dead here: Liberals, "just look at the flowers."
Yes, Obamacare is a success there. Just ask my friend who lives out there. Her monthly premium is going to $1000+.
As she said, “Who can afford this?”
The sanctuary cities should be very concerned. One of the first acts should be to cut any and all funding to these cesspools.
It is now little Mexico and will never be a place to live in.
All I’m hoping for is that the Federal Government under President Trump makes ALL Gun Laws Federal, makes all state gun laws invalid, and that the Federal 2A Laws are akin to the laws in those states today where carrying a firearm for personal protection is sacrosanct.
Here, Democratic lawmakers approved drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants and made climate change a top priority, while Covered California is hailed as an example of the Affordable Care Act’s success.
Why are so many Middle Class and Upper Middle Class people LEAVING CALIFORNIA? See Above.
SOrry folks but it is common knowledge that both these reporters hang out every night near 5th and Wall in downtown smokin crack
Now, you know how the red states felt for the last 8 years. And, just like you belittled us for the past 8 years, we are going to laugh and point at you.
You aren't even a gracious loser. So, go to hell.
I hope the #CalExit takes hold. We would be happy to be rid of you, especially if you take Oregon, Nevada, and Washington with you.
And, when you collapse into a fiscal quagmire, we are going to charge you to wall off the rest of the US to stop refugees from sneaking back into the United States.
California has been getting away with all sorts of unconstitutional official oppression and now the federals won’t turn a blind eye to it.
Should have bought those popcorn futures when I had the chance.
CA please secede. Do it now.
CA please secede. Do it now.
So is the gist of this story an implied potential threat by liberal Democrats in which CA rebels against the Feral Government? Are California legislators threatening to pick and choose which Feral Law it will abide by?
If so, is California/Mexifornia the new Confederacy and about to fire the first shots of Civil War PTII? But...but.. remember how we've all be trained like monkeys to echo, "Diversity is our Strength!" Oh, the irony.
I was shocked to see that Hillary Clinton won both Ventura and Orange Counties on Tuesday. The coast is toast.
Let’s look at the actual numbers on CA: somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2 of persons residing in CA are illegal aliens and add to that mix being deported, the “stars” in Hollywierd and Silicone Valley moving out of the U.S., I’d bet that a large number of actual citizens and normal residents just might turn deep blue CA purple, or even leaning Red and appearing more like it was in the 1980s!
Rush Limbaugh Newsletter Jan 2013 had points he was making on several topics- on gun control, this was his comments of how Democrats progress:
Fight begins: 1865,. Indeed, gun control is in the Democrat Party DNA, all the way back to its racist Civil War-era roots, when southern Democrats enacted "Black Codes" prohibiting emancipated slaves from owning guns or ammunition. Such blacks were only partly free; thanks to these Democrats, the core civil right of self defense was denied them.
Well said.
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