The thing that's missing from this analysis that I think is really important is that most people in California are liberals who do not at all trust the state Democratic party. https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1319703211834474497

Most people in California reject the Republican party, sure, because many of its top officials talk all the time about how much they hate us and don't regard us as part of their constituency, because they impede immigration that drives our thriving tech sector, because they suck.

But this does not translate to thinking that our state Democrats are doing a good job! They're really, really not! They've allowed poor housing policy to hollow out our cities. They are often actively hostile to our state's biggest industries.

They write bad laws (forget AB-5 as a matter of politics, it is an atrociously written bill that did splash damage everywhere while the legislators repeatedly tried to gerrymander in exceptions for the industries they hadn't meant to crush).

They are responsible for governing one of the world's largest economies, a state of 40million people with pressing climate, development, poverty, and homelessness problems, and there are approximately five state legislators who are taking any of those problems seriously.

The California Democratic party takes Californians for granted. And then they all endorse a proposition but are shocked that liberal Californians from all walks of life, including half of Black Californians and many immigrant Californians, don't fall in line?

"You're a Democrat, so listen to the Democrats in charge" doesn't cut it. You have to do a good job of governance to earn peoples' respect, and you have to persuade them that laws are a good idea to get people to pass those laws.