I believe I first brought this after the 2024 election based on some proposition results: Prop 6 limiting forced labor in state prisons was rejected ("would end indentured servitude in state prisons, considered one of the last remnants of slavery" -- source) and Prop 36 increasing penalties for theft and drug trafficking was passed ("would partly roll back Proposition 47, approved by voters in 2014, that turned some felonies into misdemeanors" -- source). I didn't like the smell of either one at the time.
And now we have a situation where Steve Hilton is currently leading. And so is Romero on the lieutenant governor race. Pretty sure at the end of the day when the real election happens the democratic candidates will win their statewide offices, and I do understand that there are multiple democratic candidates competing with one another for the primary and jungle elections and all, but that latter point in itself indicates lack of party coherence and discipline, which is never a good sign in politics.
I also worry deeply about Becerra. He is an unimaginative, visionless party insider with no cleat or bold ideas to take the state forward. He is vying for that position to be the caretaker. To keep thing as they have been, like Biden. And like Biden, he is likely to fall short of what the times demand, and end up handing office to the next big name Republican in the next election.
So I worry about California. These are not good signs. I think the currents at the national level are flowing as undercurrents in the state. Democrats need to stop sleeping at the wheel. There is a huge need for a change, both at the national and the state levels, but the party continues to whistle past the graveyard, with no apparent concern that the right is hungry, that they want the future, and that they are planning to do some really nasty things when they get there.
We need to just learn some lesson from what's being going on in the country and see the bigger patterns out there irrespective of Trump's poll number. The issue, if Democrats choose to see it, is bigger than Trump and MAGA.