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California’s appetite for reform fails to change its politics.
California wants change. It just doesn’t want Republicans delivering it.
That is the central tension in a new Manhattan Institute survey of likely voters statewide and in Los Angeles. Californians recognize many of the failures of their governing class. On homelessness, infrastructure, public-sector unions, and government waste, they express an appetite for reforms that would challenge the state’s progressive orthodoxies. Yet their dissatisfaction stops well short of a willingness to hand Republicans power.
The resulting political vacuum is consequential. A lethargic Democratic establishment can continue winning without delivering much. And where voters do demand an alternative, the organized far Left is positioned to supply it. California’s problem is not simply the absence of sensible policy ideas. It is the failure to assemble a politically acceptable coalition capable of putting them into practice.
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Jesse Arm is the vice president of external affairs at the Manhattan Institute, where he oversees communications, government relations, and public opinion research. This piece originally appeared in City Journal