Skip to main content

California Love

Californians face a representation crisis. Sample recent geopolitics: ~500K more people voted Clinton in Los Angeles County (1,893,770) than voted Trump in Wisconsin State (1,404,000 - NYT. 11/4). California's historic 8.2M votes for candidate Clinton did little to the influence the national outcome.
From NY/DC Acela Corridor, the Golden State is 3K miles and a 5 hour flight over North America's Great Plains and Rocky Mountains. A continent apart from Trump and Clinton's Empire State. 

Newman adjusts counties for people.

California's "obscene" Clinton cash machines did little against Trump's cheap, segmented, devisive, targeted messages to high-ROI "battleground" voters (Bloomberg). Ohio. Florida. North Carolina. Pennsylvania.  And beyond: Michigan, Wisconsin. Clinton's popular wins in liberal cities are as historically amazing (statistical outliers!) as they are electorally irrelevant. Consider Orange County, California the sixth largest county among The States. LA Times:
Clinton beat Republican Donald Trump by nearly 5 points, or 39,000 votes, in the county that has long served as a national symbol for the GOP, the home to Richard Nixon and the cradle of Ronald Reagan’s conservatism.
In California, Kerry beat Bush by 10pts in 2004. Clinton beat Trump by 30pts in 2016. So what?Because California's popular winner takes all EC votes, the margins of victory are irrelevant. So are the margins of defeat. If you are going to lose California, it doesn't matter whether you get 49% of the vote or 1%. If you are going to lose California, you might as well lose bigly. There is no downside. Maybe it helps. Mock the NY/LA media celebrities. Throw red meat.

 "Trump did have an eponymous steak line, sold via Sharper Image. The company's website..."Unfortunately, Trump Steaks are no longer available, but their legacy endures." NPR March 2016

Trump didn't try to win California. Neither did Clinton. Nor should they. High cost, little reward. Politically, California gets what it gives. Inefficient in terms of EC votes per California voter.Trump is candid about California's electoral irrelevance: 

If the election were based on total popular vote I would have campaigned in N.Y. Florida and California and won even bigger and more easily (Twitter)

 In a popular, proportional election, no doubt Trump would have campaigned differently. If he made it out of the Republican primary. If California is a battleground, both parties have incentives to think differently about "electability" during primaries. Hypothetically, blocs of California voters should be swing states unto themselves. Trump faces different incentives to regard California-Mexico relations. Clinton too. Instead, California's 55 Electoral College votes went uncontested in a symbolic, irrelevant popular blowout.
 Obsenities - moreover, they didn't matter.

 The 2016 presidential outcome is a symptom of a problem. Step back from the rubble of 2016. Among the states, Californians pay the most gross federal tax to the US Treasury (IRS). While picking up the tab, Californians are the most politically underrepresented people in three federal bodies: the Electoral College, House, and Senate. Overtaxed and unrepresented. Large states made basic concessions on taxation and representation to smaller states at the founding of the United States. Compromise is inevitable. But California's quantitative inequity in 2016 defies common sense and precedent. The status quo cheats Californians and corrupts American political life. The imbalance represents a fragile fault among these united states. That imbalance is striking compared to the states' geopolitical centers of mass. 
Four basic options

ONE - abolish the Electoral College

TWO - succeed

THREE - nothing changes

FOUR -

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tamaulipas

Before the 2016 US Presidential Election, and for the fifth consecutive year, Texans reported immigration and security as their highest priorities ( San Antonio Express ). 2000 miles northwest of Texas, on the same international border, Californians ranked employment and the economy as principal concerns ( USC ). Many people might assume differences between the state governments and cultural histories of California and Texas, together 20% of the US population ( Census ), explain their wildly different perceptions of national issues related to Mexico and drugs. But you have to understand the difference in Mexico between those two border areas - California and Texas - and how that might influence different Americans perceptions of "the problem" of Mexico and or drugs. Breitbart Media brands Breitbart Texas and Cartel Chronicles did not emerge from a political vacuum. They emerged from the 21st Century's hottest global drug war zone outside Afghanistan's Helmand River ...
Post a Comment
Read more

America Versus America

Before Mexico extradited Joaquin Guzman ( Department of State profile ) to Brooklyn on the final day of the Obama Administration, an assassin murdered the 37 year old Mexican judge assigned to Guzman's case . CCTV captured the point blank assassination: a young judge shot in the back of the head while jogging across the street ( YouTube ). Once in Brooklyn, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York described Guzman's ability to influence politicians, judges, police, and militaries across the world, presented eleven exhibits, and petitioned New York's Eastern District court to detain Guzman before trial ( pdf ): "In sum, it is difficult to imagine another person with a greater risk of fleeing prosecution than Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera." With good reason. Guzman twice escaped maximum security prison. And the Brooklyn US Attorney wants Guzman to forfeit $14 billion. Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman  escaped authorities and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Television Cities

Who cares about dead-ass white Gary Webb from Ohio besides Maxine Waters - "the face of the Democrat Party" - from Los Angeles? Before Waters led Congressional investigation of the war criminals that robbed Deutsche Bank, she wrote the 1998 foreword to "Dark Alliance", Webb's book covering Iran-Contra and the war that leveled LA communities in the 1980s. In the present, Waters faces political challenge by proxy in the friendly face of Omar Navarro. As Election 2020 plays out across screens, the most important battleground is your state of mind. And there is a good chance that territory is virtually rubble. The Stalingrad of the Fake News War is itself fake. Television City was a Trump real estate project for NBC that popular opinion concluded failed in 1987. With hindsight, The Apprentice produced The President and the images that monopolize your memory. The war for what you remember is over the air waves and between two Television Cities: Hollywood and Manhatta...
Post a Comment
Read more