When you have no real competition, you never improve. If you want proof of this concept, you need look no further than the California Democratic Party and its biggest political “stars.”
California Democratic failures are clear to anyone who looks at the state of the state. California has the highest poverty rate in the nation, a worsening homelessness crisis, an unwillingness to prosecute criminals, an exorbitantly high cost of living that is pricing middle- and lower-class families out of the state, energy and water crises of the state’s own making, and a failing education system.
But the failures extend to the state’s politicians themselves. A poll from the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley shows how mediocre California’s top politicians are compared to others on the national stage. In a poll of California Democrats, Gov. Gavin Newsom is tied with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as their top nominee for 2024. Vice President Kamala Harris, a former attorney general and senator for the state, polls third, barely ahead of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
There are so many funny things on this chart
– Newsom can’t beat Bernie in his home state (to say nothing of Harris)
– Hillary Clinton in 7th place
– There’s Michael Bloomberg 2020 residue somehow?https://t.co/WMhZPvWVd2 pic.twitter.com/bZodWiydB8— Eric Ting (@_ericting) August 19, 2022
In total, just 23% of California Democrats consider Newsom or Harris their top choice to be president. Harris, who ran for president already, is a particularly awful candidate. If you remove Newsom from the list, Harris’s support jumps from 10% to just 12%, still behind Sanders and still barely ahead of Buttigieg.
Newsom and Harris are the best politicians California has to offer on the national stage, yet even California Democrats aren’t keen to choose them over an 80-year-old socialist and a nobody former mayor of a town of 100,000 people in Indiana. They are career mediocrities who have been entrusted to run California because they are the best of the mediocrities in the California Democratic Party. California voters don’t have a better option in their state, but even they recognize how terrible their top politicians are.
