Victor Davis Hanson: Democracy Is Dying in California

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Welcome to The Daily Signal Podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:08)
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**Victor Davis Hanson** (0:14)
Hey Meta, where's the nearest metro station?

**SPEAKER_4** (0:16)
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**SPEAKER_1** (0:19)
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**Victor Davis Hanson** (0:21)
Sending message.

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**Victor Davis Hanson** (1:49)
This is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. California, as we're seeing through the lenses of the Los Angeles mayoral race, is a dysfunctional state. Democrats talk a lot about democracy dying in darkness. Democracy is dying in California. Now what do I mean by that? When you look at the LA mayoral race, you start to see this familiar pattern that all of us who live in California have noticed in state assembly, state senate races, and congressional races. We saw it on the national scale as well. But in California, what happens is a conservative candidate will take a lead or finish on election day ahead.
Then almost with a smirk, the Democratic opponent counts on ballots, mailed-in ballots that start to appear a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks after the actual election deadline, and they are at ratios of five to one, 10 to one, 20 to one.
They show the power of the SEIU and other public employee unions as well as the California Teachers Association, the big money from the billionaire class of Silicon Valley, etc. Then the Democrat candidate that we thought lost actually wins. Then if you allege that something's wrong, you're called a conspiratorial nut or an election denier. But Spencer Pratt was ahead by seven points, and Ms. Raman had already given a concession speech.
Now, it's a week after the polls closed, and suddenly these troves started appearing all week, in which it wasn't two to one. She was the third candidate when the election day tallies had begun, and we had about 60 percent of the vote. She was well behind Spencer Pratt and well behind Karen Bass. Suddenly, these ballots started coming in, and they were overwhelmingly for the third candidate, Raman. And now, as I'm speaking, suddenly, Spencer Pratt lost his lead that he had established, and apparently, everybody thought it won. It's a familiar pattern. Now, why does this happen?
It happens because there is a democratic monopoly in California.
We haven't had a Republican governor in about 15 years. We have no statewide Republican elected officials. There is a supermajority in the state assembly and the state senate. Because the governor appoints superior court, appellate court, and supreme court justices, we haven't had a single conservative justice appointed in 15 years, and most of the conservatives under Arnold Schwarzenegger have now retired.
Executive, legislative, judicial, they're all controlled by the left and the Democratic Party. Now, why did that happen? Why did the state of California that was run by Ronald Reagan, and George Degmasian, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Pete Wilson, what happened? Well, the state bureaucracies during the period of Jerry Brown's first term and his second term, and Gray Davis's short term, they began regulating administratively, stopping construction, raising taxes in the legislature with thin majorities, and pretty soon a large number of Californians that were upper middle class, middle class, lower middle class said, I can't take this anymore. The schools are bad. We have the most illegal aliens. We have the most foreign born. We have the most welfare recipients. We have the most homeless. We have the highest sales, highest gas, highest electricity, highest gas taxes.