California and the Titanic do have have one thing in common: a presumption of arrogant invulnerability.
I don’t personally know a conservative who feels CA is invulnerable but perhaps you are referring to liberals? My liberal collegeaus always thought that jack booted republicans were lying in wait to destroy the entire country.
Maybe there are conservative strong holds of hubris but the conservatives I know have been struggling to speak up and educate (when they couldn’t be fired for it) in a vain effort to halt a steady downward slide to unions/koolaid drinkers and are not optimistic. I wonder if the Sacto type still think money will flow to the state after businesses have left? Ah there is a core of people who believe, like STuart Smalley, that if they are ‘green’ enough and ‘egalitarian’ enough and ‘morally superior’ enough that they would, gosh darn it, be worth it. It’s 1:40 here so I am probably overlooking the obvious - please excuse me.
My parents always thought the other shoe was about to drop but they were repubs. Oh and our Silicon Valley thought that they could manufacture wealth from the wealth conveyor belt forever. Yes - there are, regardless of party perhaps, who saw people getting rich were sure that CA was the place that would ‘deliver’ (real estate flipping etc) most quickly.
Too big to fail.