EdgarOfTheMoors
@EdgarOfTheMoors
Republicans constantly freak out about California.
They invent lies about its economy, its politics, its population, its voting integrity, etc.
There's a reason for that.
California is a harbinger and example of how the Republican Party will meet its doom.
#VotersOfColor
California, in the post-WWII era, was a fairly conservative place. It voted Republican more often than not and sent both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan from the state capitol to the White House.
So what happened?
1994 happened... and Governor Wilson... and Proposition 187.
The early 1990's saw major social upheaval in California: the Rodney King Beating, the L.A. Riots, the O.J. Simpson trial, etc. Minorities had long been mistreated and there was anxiety among whites about changing demographics.
Sounds like America at large in the Trump era.
In 1994, Governor Pete Wilson, Republican, sought re-election. The economy was doing poorly, as the aerospace industry struggled post-Cold War. Wilson was not popular.
So he and the California Republican Party championed Proposition 187, an anti-immigrant ballot measure.
Wilson and his party bet big that turning out racially-aggrieved white voters was the ticket to reelection, so they went hard and heavy bashing Mexicans and, essentially, sounding a LOT like Donald Trump.
Here's a sample ad that Wilson ran that year.
Proposition 187 would have made it impossible for undocumented persons to access public services: teachers would have had to turn their students over to authorities, and doctors and hospitals their patients.
Prop 187 was disgusting.
.
.
.
It passed and Wilson was reelected.
While Prop 187 was soon struck down as unconstitutional, the larger impact had to do with the electorate.
Latinos had never been a significant voting bloc in California. The Prop 187 fight mobilized & motivated them to become politically active & powerful.
They still are.
The Proposition 187 fight forever identified the California Republican Party with racism in a state that is now majority-minority... and it also did that with WHITE voters here, who became more liberal, tolerant, and multicultural in response to the GOP's brazen awfulness.
Currently, EVERY statewide office in California is held by a Democrat. We have a jungle primary system in which the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, compete in the general election. It is not rare for those two to both be Democrats.
The GOP is dead statewide here.
Democrats hold California's legislative bodies by supermajority margins, which allowed, finally, for the state to move past the de facto veto that the waning, angry Republican minority held on the budget.
California's Congressional delegation is mostly diverse and liberal.
Republicans are afraid of Latino voters because they can read the tea leaves.
What happened in California two decades ago is happening nationwide now.
The tide is turning. The Trump GOP, xenophobic, weak, and angry, is alienating an entire generation of voters of color.
The Republican Base rallied loudly to calls for a border wall because
a) they're xenophobic, &
b) they see Latino voters as the demographic death-knell to white-identity electoral supremacy.
Ironically, it's their treatment of Latinos that turns Latinos against the GOP.
So, my friends of #TheResistance, take heart.
The GOP won the 1994 battle, but lost the war. Heck, they're almost annihilated in our state now.
The GOP barely (with Russian help) won the 2016 battle, but is losing the larger war... and they know it.
#Resist
#BlueWave
End/
It's like he's TRYING to prove my point. 🤣🤣🤣
Donald J. TrumpVerified account
@realDonaldTrump
The United States needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval. The safety and security of our country is #1