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The Rights Hatred of California Is Really Fear of a Future that Already Is Working
Back before the country lost its mind, journalists sent to report on California first reflexively noted its eccentricities, then deployed an entire lexicon of wondering clichés to describe the importance of what they’d seen: The “Golden State,” they wrote, was studded with “signposts to the new,” the place where “the future came to happen.”
This, though, is the age of Trump and to his supporters California has become an “outlier,” a pariah no longer part of the “real America.” The state’s crime was to prefer Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in such numbers that she won the popular ballot by nearly 3 million votes, thereby denying Donald Trump a democratic mandate for his intended transformation of the United States, its economy, trade relationships and foreign policy. In fact, Clinton’s 48% to 46% victory in the popular count has become the basis for a new right-wing defense of the Electoral College.
In a piece cited across the Internet’s conservative news sites, Investor’s Daily wrote, “While Clinton’s overall margin looks large and impressive, it is due to Clinton’s huge margin of victory in one state — California — where she got a whopping 4.3 million more votes than Trump. California is the only state, in fact, where Clinton’s margin of victory was bigger than President Obama’s in 2012 — 61.5% vs. Obama’s 60%. But California is the exception that proves the true genius of the Electoral College — which was designed to prevent regional candidates from dominating national elections.”
Since Clinton also carried New York and Massachusetts, it’s a little hard to grasp the author’s notion of a “region,” but never mind. Conservative commentator Michael Barone drilled down on what’s really wrong with California in one of his recent columns.
“California has been called the Left Coast for quite a while,” he wrote. “Just about everyone in Silicon Valley except Peter Thiel and in Hollywood except Pat Sajak supported Clinton. White middle class families have been pretty well priced out of the state by high taxes and housing costs, and the Hispanic and Asian immigrants who have replaced them vote far more Democratic.”
Barone argued that “the case against abolition” of the Electoral College “is one suggested by the Framers’ fears that voters in one large but highly atypical state could impose their will on a contrary-minded nation. That largest state in 1787 was Virginia, home of four of the first five presidents. New York and California, by remaining closely in line with national opinion up through 1996, made the issue moot.
http://www.tim-rutten.com/the-rights-hatred-of-california-is-really-fear-of-a-future-that-already-is-working/
“California has been called the Left Coast for quite a while,” he wrote. “Just about everyone in Silicon Valley except Peter Thiel and in Hollywood except Pat Sajak supported Clinton. White middle class families have been pretty well priced out of the state by high taxes and housing costs, and the Hispanic and Asian immigrants who have replaced them vote far more Democratic.”
Barone argued that “the case against abolition” of the Electoral College “is one suggested by the Framers’ fears that voters in one large but highly atypical state could impose their will on a contrary-minded nation. That largest state in 1787 was Virginia, home of four of the first five presidents. New York and California, by remaining closely in line with national opinion up through 1996, made the issue moot.
http://www.tim-rutten.com/the-rights-hatred-of-california-is-really-fear-of-a-future-that-already-is-working/
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