All hail King Gavin

November 4, 2025 may go down in history as the date that the last of what was left of true democracy in California was snuffed out. The worst part, California voters did it to themselves. I’ve written previously about the political class’s ongoing efforts to throttle representative government. Yesterday, voters got in on the act.

In 2008 and 2010 California voters approved Prop. 11 and Prop. 20, respectively, which established a Citizen Redistricting Commission. The laws’ rules — until last night — ensured at least a modicum of equal representation in the process of drawing federal and state electoral districts. That’s out the window. The likes of Scott Wiener and Buffy Wicks now will determine what California’s political map looks like. We’re all going to see how that works out. 

It’s all but certain that the state’s Congressional delegation will become more hilariously lopsided than it already is. Bear with me as we do some arithmetic: Currently, California has 43 Democrat and nine Republican members of Congress. For the mathematically inclined, that works out to 83% Democrat and 17% Republican. That’s already out of whack: Only 45% of registered voters are Democrats, with 25% registered Republicans, 22% registered as “no party preference” (NPP) and 7% registered with an array of fringe parties. According to research, about 26% of NPP voters lean Republican, which, along with voters registered to conservative fringe parties who generally vote Republican, brings that block up to a total of around 30% of all registered voters. 

With the likely loss of those five seats, Republicans will represent just over 9% of California’s congressional delegation, less than a third of their actual proportion in the state. The results will be similar in state assembly and senate districts.

Moreover, Prop. 50 further disenfranchises voters whose voices are already barely audible, if at all. Voters in places like Yuba City, Redding, Mt. Shasta, the Eastern Sierras, the Central Valley and Barstow. Democrats will almost assuredly complete their takeover of traditionally Republican Orange County. Those millions of voters won’t disappear, of course, they’ll just be silenced once and for all.

I don’t care how you feel about Republicans, MAGA or Donald Trump. A one party state is bad for everyone. You only need to look around to see what the Democrat super majority has already wrought: Crumbling infrastructure, the gutting of the middle class, the all out assault on homeownership, the all out assault on single family neighborhoods, public schools that routinely graduate hundreds of thousands of high school seniors who can barely read, the Homeless Industrial Complex, the Bureaucratic Industrial Complex, outrageous taxes, fees and assessments that hurt the middle and working class hardest, and naked corruption and self-dealing at all levels.

Make no mistake: Prop. 50 has nothing to do with democracy. Contrary to the ululations from Gavin Newsom and Barack Obama it barely has anything to do with challenging President Trump. California’s next Congressional elections are next November, and the winners won’t assume their seats until January 8, 2027. Presidents see their power quickly begin to wane in the last two years of their terms, and midterm elections typically go against the party in the White House anyway. In other words, California’s Democrat reinforcements will arrive in Washington precisely at the moment when the party will least need them.

Ironically — or perhaps appropriately — Democrats themselves also will experience negative consequences. In particular, progressive Democrats who aren’t socialists — many of whom are of the self-satisfied Millennial and Boomer sorts who think that “No Kings” rallies meant anything to anyone but themselves and who voted in large numbers for Prop. 50 — will see their future choices distorted by the party’s increasing radicalism. They’re about to get a heaping dose of Zorhan Mamdani style medicine, the kinds of ideological basket cases who smear actual hardworking public servants like Traci Park as “fascist.” Enjoy, fools.

Next stop: The Golden State.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Californians’ hatred of Republicans — and Donald Trump in particular — really is so complete that they are willing to sacrifice democracy itself in order to attempt to thwart him in the sunset of his second term. Then again, how have those previous efforts worked out in our “state of resistance?” A marginal court victory here, an impotent day of protest there. Bang up job, California Democrats.

An idle, idea-less party

Aside from the quarter of a billion dollars the state spent on the special election, out of a budget that’s already teetering on the brink, yesterday’s vote is infuriating because for the umpteenth time, rather than put forward positive, forward-looking, even visionary alternatives to the MAGA agenda, California Democrats went full reactionary. And for what? Texas’s redistricting scheme — which I also vehemently oppose — likely will net five new Republican seats in Congress. As noted, Prop. 50 likely will net five new Democrats.

Again, congratulations, Dems, you’ve managed to play your adversaries to a draw, at the price of democracy, after years of getting your butts handed to you. You’ve also revealed not only that you don’t have any original ideas left, but that you’re willing to play the exact same games you’ve screeched for nearly a decade amounted to “fascism.” The only thing more pathetic is Gavin Newsom’s social media.

It’s too bad voters forgot that in 2000 state Democrat leaders conjured up the “Incumbent Protection Plan,” designed specifically to thwart those who would challenge the establishment. These days term limits would offset any such plan (though term limits have their own anti-democratic consequences). The next plan will probably be called something like the “Machine Vetted Candidate Protection Plan.”

So many California Democrats are so blinded by rage at MAGA that they don’t see the hideous corruption that is slowly turning the state into a serfdom comprised of a few ultra wealthy and masses of impoverished dependents, with an ever-shrinking middle class clinging to whatever’s left. With apologies to H. Ross Perot they’re deaf to the giant sucking sound of wealth, primarily in the form of real estate, being transferred from individuals and families to institutional investors, bulge bracket banks and international finance, billions at a time. They turn a blind eye to the Homeless Industrial Complex that has spent tens of billions to kill tens of thousands.

If you’re not disgusted, you’re not paying attention.