After months of publicly lamenting the state of their leaderless coalition, Democratic voters are giving California governor Gavin Newsom a second look following his stand-off with Donald Trump over the recent unrest in Los Angeles. Though his attempt to regain control of the national guard troops Trump deployed was dealt a blow by a federal appeals court, Newsom’s outspoken attacks on the administration’s immigration raids have given succor to a base in search of unwavering support for the values that define modern Democrats.
Freedom of movement, multiculturalism, global economic openness, and affirmation of the historically marginalized: these are the core principles that have become synonymous with the Brahmin Left’s vision of progressive capitalism, and which California’s particular fusion of elite and activist driven politics has done so much to shape.
The problem for Democrats pining for a Golden State hero to slay Trumpism is that the strength of these convictions is indelibly tied up with a record of aloof misrule and beguiling hypocrisy. While some state Democrats have been in an uproar this week over Newsom’s proposed budget cuts, the state’s deep-seated economic challenges extend far beyond decisions over any single social program. Since Arnold Schwarzenegger left the Governor’s office in 2011, Democrats have overwhelmingly dominated California’s state politics, enjoying a “supermajority” in the state legislature free of Republican influence for over twelve years, they have also shifted the poles of Democratic politics from the Northeast and Midwest to the West Coast.
Some progressives might assume this performance is a tribute to uncompromising values and smart party-building. Yet in this period, California’s image as a beacon for those seeking reinvention and the American Dream has been gradually but unmistakably sullied, a challenge Newsom’s second term in office is unlikely to reverse despite his sudden interest in slashing red tape around development.
For the world’s fourth largest economy, the state’s major indicators of development don’t inspire much confidence. Nearly a third of Californians live in or near the threshold of poverty, and nearly a quarter of the U.S. homeless population lives in California. The future isn’t bright for the state’s youth, either. One 2023 report on educational attainment placed California in the bottom half, far below most other states dominated by Democrats.
And the “California Exodus,” first identified in the early 1990s, shows few signs of abating. The UnHerd contributor Joel Kotkin, a former Bill Clinton supporter, has blamed California’s woes on a green, liberal “gentry” motivated by a suspicion of development and expensive energy policies. Thronged, purportedly, by self-serving public sector unions, NIMBY lobbies, and zealous climate activists, California’s Democratic Party has succumbed to its worst instincts around managing its existing coalition. With a monopoly on state power, it has rewarded inertia while amplifying a caricature-prone conception of social justice divorced from the very real material hardships of the working-class.
Kotkin’s unsparing portrait is undoubtedly meant to provoke progressives who sincerely believe California is a policy leader and agenda-setter for the Democrat party. Many would proudly contend that, with an assist from the party’s delegation in the Pacific Northwest, California Democrats have the set bar for regulating carbon emissions and extending protections to minorities, and that they are focused on improving wages in California’s all important hospitality sector. If the state’s affordable housing crisis is less than excusable, they would add, at least Newsom and his allies are waking up to the issue.
This apologia fails to appreciate that when national voters think of the merits of one-party rule under Democrats, they now turn to California’s underwhelming performance. And the disenchantment cuts across the ideological spectrum. Cultural moderates and blue-collar conservatives believe the party’s priorities are elitist and dogmatic, while Left-wing populists see the state as ground zero for government capture by Big Tech.
The air of elitism cannot be overstated. Too often, support for California’s progressivism, both within the state and from afar, betrays the exact dynamic Kotkin and like-minded critics take issue with: the entitled sense of “stewardship” that drives the modern Democratic Party’s approach to governance. Rather than focus on broadening the pathways to middle-class prosperity and setting bold targets for poverty reduction, California Democrats appear to be in the business of merely managing economic insecurity through means-tested programs like food assistance. Judging by the numbers, they haven’t succeeded, despite plenty of legislation attesting to their support for active government.
“It has rewarded inertia while amplifying a caricature-prone conception of social justice.”
It wasn’t always this way. Between the original Progressive Era and the early postwar boom, California had a competitive two party-system inflected by agrarian populism, anti-monopoly politics, and a growing trade union movement. The Second World War and federal New Deal policies rapidly industrialized the state, consolidating California’s status as a cultural, economic, and political counterweight to the East Coast and a place with expanding potential. Despite some hotbeds of hardline conservatism, California overall seemed to testify to the efficacy and popularity of strong government and public investment. Indeed, its extraordinary growth and the population’s sense of upward mobility seemed largely driven by the New Deal order.
But the former governor Jerry Brown transformed West Coast progressivism. Big developmentalist projects and courtship of the working-class gave way to a watered-down version of “New Left” autonomy, wellness culture, and (often superficial) ecological consciousness. While the Golden State’s notorious smog eventually improved as a result of stronger environmental standards, prospects for the working-class were less encouraging.
Since then, California’s stark economic inequality has, for all intents and purposes, become a Democratic problem. Economic progressives point with good reason to anti-government, budget-slashing Republicans in Congress as a major reason for America’s pockmarked welfare state and wealth inequality. But the fact is that in deep-blue California there is no obstructionist opposition party to blame for its limited horizons. Indeed, although Trump noticeably improved his margins there in the 2024 election, the state GOP is essentially a rump party (ostracized for its aggressive stance on restricting immigrants, yes, but also a victim of its own chosen irrelevance).
This inconvenient fact of one-party rule is beginning to bear down on other California Democrats hoping to lead their party out of the wilderness. While Newsom still enjoys the highest name recognition at the national level, the evolving situation might be best described as the Ro Khanna dilemma, in which aspiring party insurgents are tethered to the very upscale, Brahmin Left constituencies they must distance themselves from. Since winning his first House term in 2016, Khanna has built a profile as both an “economic patriot” who advocates for industrial policy and a sometime-adversary of monopoly power, particularly in regard to the tech industry. He co-chaired Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, and has become a prominent interlocutor between the party establishment and progressive activists. His near ubiquitous media presence during Trump’s first six months back in office suggests he is either planning to run for president or play progressive kingmaker in the hopes of catapulting himself to the VP slot.
Yet Khanna also represents the richest congressional district in the United States — a symbol of just how comfortable the once-Republican dominated upper-class are with Democrats, and how much the once-populist Democratic Party has ingratiated itself among America’s 21st century oligarchs and cultural elites.
That image of following the preferences of society’s richest will be hard to shake. Many progressive Democrats still like to think of themselves as New Deal-style social democrats focused on workers’ interests. Yet as Trump’s “triple-trending counties” prove, many parts of the country don’t see them that way. Fair or not, overcoming that perception is the main task for the Democrats. The question is whether the party’s would-be leaders have the stamina and authenticity to do so.
As Khanna illustrates, however, it will take Trumpian levels of chutzpah for elite progressives to convincingly run against their ossified establishment. Whatever his true convictions, Khanna seems unlikely to transform into a veritable tribune of the left behind, whether they reside in California or Western Pennsylvania. Needless to say, the odds of the same happening to Newsom are even more remote.
That’s not to say a healthy intraparty rebellion couldn’t ignite further in California. But given the state’s reputation for dysfunction and drift, Democrats desperate for new blood and new ideas might reconsider the faith they once put in their California delegation. Jejune fantasies of a “Left coast” paradise can no longer distract from the hard truth: In the age of Trump, Progressive California has been a drag on building real working-class power.
