In the midst of advising California Democrats to not mote the state's primary earlier in the year for the 2020 election cycle, Michael Barone notes that America's most populous state has been drifting pretty far left from the mainstream.
As I wrote in a December 2016 Washington Examiner column, is that for the first time in the nation's history our largest state has voted at one end of the political spectrum. California has become a political outlier. New York, the largest state in censuses from 1820 to 1960, almost always voted within 5 percent of the national average in those years. So did California from the time it became the largest state in 1963 up through 1996. But it voted 6 points more Democratic than the nation in 2000 and 2004, 9 points more in 2008, 10 points more in 2012 and a whopping 14 points more Democratic than the nation in 2016. Only one state, Hawaii, voted more Democratic, and by only 1 point.
This monolithic drift isn't good for America, and it isn't even good for left-wing Californians. Breaking the state up into several smaller states would allow the people in different regions of California to have governments that most suit them -- and a break-up could easily be crafted that preserves a net advantage of two Senators for the Democrats. The only people who would lose from the break-up would be the hacks who sit atop the pyramid of government now.
