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California and Its Collapsing Blue-State Democrat Model
American Greatness ^ | 24 Mar, 2025 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 03/24/2025 4:38:00 AM PDT by MtnClimber

California’s high taxes, crime, and regulations are driving an exodus, shifting political power to red states as the once-prosperous blue-state model collapses under economic and social strain.

While the media and the new Democrat Party grow hysterical over the Trump counter-revolution, they are missing some of the most revolutionary and insidious changes in American society of the last century.

Much has been written about the collapse of the old orthodox Democratic Party, along with the growing irrelevance and dysfunction of the legacy media, elite universities, and state and federal agencies. But their growing unattractiveness is all related and was not just the result of top-down development.

Rather, current Democrat Party radicalism, street theater, and violence were merely reflections of its own preexisting cultural antipathy toward the middle class. The party is now a pyramidal coalition of the very wealthy and professional classes comprising the capstone, resting atop a vast, expanding bottom of the subsidized and working poor, strapped pensioners and retirees, angry indebted students, 30s-something urban wannabees, impoverished immigrants—including perhaps 30 million here illegally—and, increasingly, trapped residents of a dystopian big-city America.

The collapse of the blue-state/blue-city model and those who work within and promote it reflects the radical environmentalism of the college-educated, as well as an array of high taxes, high crime, endless government regulations, housing shortages, massive homelessness, illegal immigration, critical-legal-theory prosecutors, ethnic and racial chauvinism, defund-the-police city councils, and, most importantly, chronic budget deficits and vast, unfunded pension liabilities and obligations.

In response to this progressive implosion that accounts for Democrat Party unpopularity, under the radar are historic demographic shifts. They reflect two insidious phenomena.

One, the blue-state, urban/professional/college-educated profile has become antithetical to fertility.

No one knows exactly the contributory relative roles to childlessness played by the progressive embrace

(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: california; democrats; gavinnewsom; karenbass; losangeles; vdh; victordavishanson
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1 posted on 03/24/2025 4:38:00 AM PDT by MtnClimber
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To: texas booster

VDH ping


2 posted on 03/24/2025 4:38:32 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

I was born in So Cal. It was a paradise. I watched it collapse right after the Reagan amnesty. I left a long time ago for a place much less vibrant


3 posted on 03/24/2025 4:41:08 AM PDT by Strict9
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To: MtnClimber

Kali has survived this long because its resources were exploited by the left, and the US taxpayers helped foot the bill for this leftist utopian experiment .

Cash flow is gone, time to reap what you sowed.

Last election showed some signs of life, we will see if the dancing fool and his minions succeed in completely destroying this once beautiful state.


4 posted on 03/24/2025 4:43:41 AM PDT by blitz128
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To: MtnClimber

California’s big problem is that the whole state acts like Hollywood, where reality is merely a state of mind.


5 posted on 03/24/2025 4:45:03 AM PDT by ComputerGuy ( )
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To: MtnClimber

Utopian California- The catalyst for the eventual destruction of the United States? Blue state MI seems to be positioned to follow it down.


6 posted on 03/24/2025 4:56:49 AM PDT by equaviator (If 60 is the new 40 then 35 must be the new 15.)
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To: MtnClimber

The thing is that CA has such a huge economy that it will take a long time to finally collapse. Also, select part of the state may collapse while others will be fine.


7 posted on 03/24/2025 5:14:09 AM PDT by rbg81 (=)
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To: MtnClimber

california may want to vote their way out

but the single party in charge

has voter fraud down to a science


8 posted on 03/24/2025 5:27:45 AM PDT by joshua c
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To: rbg81

If CA were a nation state, it would be Venezuela. Caracas was a shiny tourist destination and natural resources were abundant. A communist thug with violent mobs could tip the southern half as it stands, though it seems there have been mini versions of this over the years.


9 posted on 03/24/2025 5:34:18 AM PDT by epluribus_2
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To: Strict9
I was in SoCal in the early 80x, it was amazing. I settled there for awhile but work took me elsewhere. I am glad now that it did. Friends and family who live there struggle with all that VDH mentioned and more. Massive traffic all hours of the day. Water rationing, poor public transportation system overrun with homeless, but to expensive to drive anywhere, dangerous if you are elderly. Some people I know left the once beautiful coast to the Inland Empire, but are being pushed further west. Nevada and Arizona are becoming gas stops as people look further west for common sense. Last trip to Cali, I was disappointed to see what happened to the once laid back beach communities. Everywhere, these communities looked like a poor man's Rodeo drive with adobe store fronts, chain restaurants and neon lights. Why the hell do people think they can build something more beautiful than what God put there in the first place. Recall in the 70s as a young Marine stopping in a diner/beach shop somewhere around San Clemente. Place was full of surfers and beach goers. Really laid back. As an 18 year old kid from the Midwest this was like some 60s beach movie. One of the surfers left got into a Rolls Royce with surf boards on it and drove off. I thought what a cool place. Now it is strip malls Glitzy beach shops and high end stores.
10 posted on 03/24/2025 5:38:26 AM PDT by OldGoatCPO (No Caitiff Choir of Angels will sing for me)
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To: epluribus_2

Peter Thiel described CA’s economic model as a kind of Western Saudi Arabia. Just swap Big Tech for Big Oil. His point was that the wealth brought in from Big Tech masks a lot of underlying problems. But might not do so forever.


11 posted on 03/24/2025 5:39:26 AM PDT by rbg81 (=)
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To: MtnClimber
Unfortunately, it will be a while before anything changes. Although grassroots groups like We the People Orange County and local California Republican Assembly clubs are having an impact in local politics such as school board races, the state GOP is run by country club types in the Willkie-Dewey-Rockefeller-Ford tradition, and we continue to put out weak candidates for statewide offices. Last year, for example, the GOP standard bearer for the US Senate seat now occupied by Adam Schiff hardly campaigned at all, and he shunned the MAGA movement.

So far, no strong GOP candidates have emerged for next year's gubernatorial election. But there is one bright spot--a proposition to bring back voter ID is circulating, has strong support, and may be on the ballot next year.

12 posted on 03/24/2025 5:42:15 AM PDT by Fiji Hill
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To: MtnClimber

Marxists hate the bourgeoisie. They also hate the rural folk. And Christians.


13 posted on 03/24/2025 5:44:51 AM PDT by Ge0ffrey
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To: Ge0ffrey
”Marxists hate the bourgeoisie. They also hate the rural folk. And Christians.”

Communists love the masses. It’s people they hate.

14 posted on 03/24/2025 5:46:42 AM PDT by Flag_This (They're lying.)
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To: MtnClimber
impoverished immigrants—including perhaps 30 million here illegally

Come on, Victor, it's more like 50 million.

15 posted on 03/24/2025 5:49:17 AM PDT by Sicon ("All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - G. Orwell)
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To: MtnClimber
Left-controlled city councils, state legislatures, universities, and executive agencies promote the narrative that the wealthy are greedy, selfish, and ‘don’t pay their fair share.’ The problem with that strategy of blame-gaming the more successful is that it is starting to run out of the more successful.

Paraphrasing Margaret Thatcher.

16 posted on 03/24/2025 5:56:21 AM PDT by Sicon ("All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - G. Orwell)
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To: MtnClimber

Welcome to the Hotel California.


17 posted on 03/24/2025 6:11:14 AM PDT by PGalt (Past Peak Civilization?)
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To: Sicon

The left are parasites.

At first they just wound the host but if they stay in power long enough they will kill it.


18 posted on 03/24/2025 6:12:03 AM PDT by cgbg (It was not us. It was them--all along.)
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To: Fiji Hill

19 posted on 03/24/2025 6:12:41 AM PDT by bert ( (KE. NP. +12) Where is ZORRO when California so desperately needs him?)
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To: MtnClimber

The SHIT State of Illinois is TRYING to outdo the SHITTIER State of Californication, maybe they will eventually.


20 posted on 03/24/2025 6:46:21 AM PDT by Democrat = party of treason
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