CALIFORNIA HAS BECOME THE FAR LEFT COAST:

The Democrats’ crushing dominance allows them to use California as a progressive policy laboratory. As a result, the state has the highest welfare numbers (a third of all Americans on welfare live in California), the largest contingent of illegal immigrants, a burgeoning homeless population, onerous regulations on business and private property, mediocre public schools, high income taxes (the highest marginal rate is 13.3%) and sales taxes, a yawning gap between rich and poor, its own summer blend of expensive gasoline, bedraggled and crowded roads to punish people further for driving, and a widely mocked high-speed rail boondoggle.

To risk an analogy, California is to today’s Democrats roughly what South Carolina was to pre-Civil War Democrats: the showcase state, the vanguard of enlightened public policy offering itself for emulation. Yet it’s been a long time since the state produced political figures of obvious national importance such as Earl Warren, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.Pete Wilson, the senator and governor, seems to have been the end of that line. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s governorship was a box-office flop. Jerry Brown, after 16 years in the gubernatorial chair, still wrestled with the mystery of Jerry Brown.

Pre-Civil War Democrats, you say?