Donald Trump has been a war with California since day one of his Presidency …
Republicans running for office a month ago got a resounding message from the voters out there….
‘We don’t like Donald Trump and those who run with him’….
The idea that campaign money produced the Blue Wave results in the state is just overlooking their main political problem….
The question going forward for the California GOP and others across the nation is ….What are they going to do for the next two years?
“If you were running for dogcatcher in Orange County – or in a lot of places in California – and you had an ‘R’ next to your name on the ballot, you lost,” said Andrew Acosta, a Democratic consultant in the state. “It was Trump. Trump created this. There wasn’t much Republicans could do to stop it.”
It could be decades before state Republicans’ chances recover, some in the party say.
“This is the death of the Republican Party” in California, said Mike Madrid, a Republican consultant in the state. “There’s no coming back from this for at least a generation, if not more.”
Still other Republicans pointed fingers at the campaigns themselves, arguing that none of the congressional campaigns “were any different than any other generic Republican, so that was the fundamental problem,” said John Thomas, a GOP consultant based in California. “Trump was underwater in all the other seats, except in Dana’s, so that was an easy argument for Democrats to make, vote out the generic Republicans.”
Rexroad, who worked on Knight’s campaign, said he’s still grappling with what happened, weighing whether the results hinged on tactics or on atmospherics.
“Honestly, I don’t know what we could’ve done,” he said. “I’m going to spend a lot of my time over the holidays thinking about it.”….
Pete Wilson & Prop. 187 gave the decisive wound to the party of John C. Frémont, Hiram Johnson, Earl Warren (a vocal advocate of Japanese-American internment in 1942) and Ronald Reagan a quarter-century ago, but Donald Trump delivered the quietus or coup de grâce.
With Californians on the GOP ticket 7 times out of 10 between 1952 & 1988, the Golden State voted for only one Democratic presidential candidate (LBJ in 1964). But in the seven elections since 1990, she has never voted for another Republican ticket.
[ 1952-56 Ike-Nixon; 1960 Nixon-Lodge; 1964 LBJ-HHH; 1968-72 Nixon-Agnew; 1976 Ford-Dole; 1980-84 Reagan-Bush; 1988 Bush-Quayle; 1992-96 Clinton-Gore; 2000 Gore-Lieberman; 2004 Kerry-Edwards; 2008-12 Obama-Biden; 2016 Clinton-Kaine ]
The trend continues’s eh?
And they don’t know what to do????
Actually, James, California’s popular vote usually favours the winner of the national popular vote (though not always the Electoral College).
California has voted Democratic in the last 7 elections, but then so have the American voters at large. In the previous three elections (1980-88), both California and the national electorate supported Republicans (Reagan/Bush/Quayle).
In the 28 presidential elections from 1892 to 2016, California supported the national popular-vote winner in all but three elections, the last two of those three being close both nationally and statewide (T. Roosevelt-Hiram Johnson, Prog., in 1912; Nixon-Lodge 1960 & Ford-Dole in 1976.)
But a couple of other big states have also been good at mirroring the national popular favourite, such as Illinois (R in 1916 & 1976). This isn’t so true for, say, Michigan or Florida.
Ohio, as a must-win state for the GOP, has been better, on the other hand, at reflecting the Electoral College whose votes have mirrored the Buckeye State’s delegation in all but three elections since 1892 (R in 1892, 1944 & 1960).
So goes Ohio?
And
The vote for Democrats in House races in Cali locked out a lot of GOPER’s…
Yes….
We must NOT for get that the President of THIS country is NOT elected by the popular vote as with EVERY other election….