Also, IMHO, few people have messed up US tax policy like Grover Norquist. Even if you don't agree with that particular humble opinion, he is, at the very least, a figure with his own agenda to push. He's far from an unbiased source.

My take on this remains what it's been for decades (offensive words, but I'm not sure what would fit better) :

"I'm not surprised that politicians are whores. I'm horribly disappointed that they're cheap sleazy whores."

https://www.npr.org/2017/03/29/521954033/stanford-professor-...

And California may lean blue on the federal level, but it is a very anti-tax state (Prop 13, etc.).

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is one of the most powerful political groups in the state and has been doing the same schtick as Norquist (though, when Jarvis was alive, under a different name), since Norquist was still in college.

It's not pure blue, now, either, and more to the point, the Democrats in the California electorate are not a hive mind of stereotypes.

> But the effort the parent described is from 2004, so what matters are the politics of modern CA.

The Norquist-before-Norquist Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is one of the most powerful political forces in modern California, too.

(Also, in 2004, California was less bright blue than modern CA; it had just recalled the Democratic governor and elected a Republican replacement, after all.)