It's like having a monopoly and not having to compete.

Really you want both sides to be strong and for there to be a healthy push and pull. So the best ideas from each rise to the top and then do battle via good faith debate. With the ability and willingness to steelman each other's arguments.

Instead what we tend to see is an eagerness to interpret everything in the worst way possible, attacking strawmen and talking past each other. Which accomplishes little aside from increasing polarization.

Ideally, you want more than two sides , there are nuances to everyone’s beliefs, forcing them to choose just red/blue is reducing choices and doesn’t reflect real preferences

Not really. The farm valleys are very, very red, while the major cities are very, very blue. I would say CA is a very politically polarized state.

Don't the farm valleys have much less people than the cities? The map might look as if the colors are balanced, but the population density matters.

The valleys are mostly irrelevant due to their lower population.

And that’s why both chambers of the state legislature are ~20% Republican?

Yes, a nicely irrelevant amount.

This is why I really wish we had ranked choice voting (or approval voting). That way we'd have more political parties and a healthier political climate.

Ranked choice voting isn't what's stopping a third party. Majority-wins / first-past-the-post is.

There's ranked choice voting in San Francisco, and there's not a new party.

> Ranked choice voting isn't what's stopping a third party. Majority-wins / first-past-the-post is.

Uh, ranked choice / IRV is a different system than majority / FPTP. Having the former means not having the latter (for any given office.)

But state and federal offices don't use RCV, and local offices are formally nonpartisan, so there are no partisan offices that SF's use of RCV effects.

Maybe I used the wrong terminology. More specifically, I think our issue is with winner-take-all, rather than proportional representation (see: all(?) parliamentary systems).

We have something different in California, apparently you don’t know about it? Hard to have a conversation when folks are unaware.

California allows two candidates from the same party to run against eachother. Do other states not?

It is worse than that. With the passage of the "Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act" California has open primaries (anyone can vote for anyone on the ballot in the primaries) and only the top two get to be on the main ballot. So many times only two Democrats are on the ballot with no Republican candidate at all. Not a good situation in my opinion.

It would actually work in favor of Republican-inclined voters, though not necessarily the party itself.

By allowing anyone to vote, Democrat candidates are incentivized to be more moderate, because a vote from a Republican is as good as another from a Democrat. Without open primaries, a Democratic-only primary pretty much decides the winner, and a candidate only has to appeal to fellow Democrats.

Yeah, no. Reality doesn’t bear out with your theory.

IMHO because R's instantly become disenfranchised. Only if voting were compulsory would it work as prev suggested, and thats not realistic.

Jerry Brown was a conservative by any historical understanding of the term, and he won in a landslide. Gavin Newsom is also relatively moderate. For example, he's made it clear that it's simply not economically feasible to throw money at homeless housing (because he literally tried that in SF as mayor). And hit the pause button on high-speed rail (which is basically a death sentence). Newsom rose up through the San Francisco Democratic political machine, which while liberal on social issues has been until recently predominately controlled by right-of-center politicians and interest groups. The last three mayors, including Newsom, have been opponents of the self-styled "progressive" faction. Unfortunately, Newsom has ambitions for higher office so he's not providing much leadership at the moment; just refereeing squabbles and trying to avoid bad press.

A large contingent of Republicans wanted the top-two primary system, believing it would benefit them. (Though the GOP opposed it.) It didn't work out that way. But it didn't really change the dynamics in the other direction, either; that train had been accelerating for years.

California is a one-party state because of term limits. Running for office is expensive and difficult. Few sane people, unless they're independently wealthy, wish to expend all that time and effort to serve a mere two terms. They want a political career. With term limits the only way to have a political career is to jump office every two terms. The best chance of accomplishing that--of achieving career "progression"--is to work closely with a political party, which can ensure a spot in various low-level offices if you don't make the cut for a bigger office. Term limits make the party system more important. What ends up happening is that the party with more offices and better electoral chances in the near future when this process starts will quickly build on that initial advantage, while the other parties will quickly wither. If Texas enacted term limits I have no doubt that Houston, Austin, Dallas, etc, would quickly become, nominally at least, Republican.

That said, California may be a one-party state, but there are absolutely liberals, moderates, and conservatives within the party. What difference does the label "Democratic" or "Republican" make, so long as there are free and open elections? From a foreign country's perspective, most American politicians behave alike regardless of whether they're Democratic or Republican.

One benefit of being an all-blue (or all-red) state is that there's less political grid-lock. At least, less grid-lock from naked partisanship. Grid-lock from the electorate demanding conflicting and contradictory policies... alas that doesn't go away.

> A large contingent of Republicans wanted the top-two primary system, believing it would benefit them. (Though the GOP opposed it.) It didn't work out that way.

It does benefit them, by giving Republicans more influence on what candidate is elected in districts where they have no chance of electing one of their own.

> California is a one-party state because of term limits.

No, it’s more because the California Republican Party followed the national party to the far right over the last couple of decades, while the California electorate didn't.

California is a “one party state” because Gov Pete Wilson and the CA GOP went after the racist vote in the mid 90’s to get re-elected by heavily supporting Prop 187, which denied all state services to undocumented immigrants. Until then, it was relatively conservative.

Turns out that (thankfully) there aren’t enough racists for keep control of the state government, and since then the CA GOP has become basically irrelevant.

In the long term I think the national GOP is doing this by going after racists, extreme fundamentalists, and other fanatics.

The fanatic vote is political cocaine: temporary high, then you need more and more, then your non coke head friends drift away, then you are strung out.

> then your non coke head friends drift away, then you are strung out.

Alas, that may be more wishful thinking than reality. :( There are countless countries around the world, both in modern history and today, that prove the dynamic can be sustained indefinitely.

I don't know about Dallas, but Houston and Austin are solidly liberal, and I don't think term limits would change that. Most people would still vote the same way for mayor and city and councilman.

Uh, yeah. Reality does bear out your theory. The extremes have been muted on both sides.

Yes, if your views are at the extremes, you have less voice. That's a FEATURE, not a bug. And I feel no sympathy for you.

I would say it’s your own bias which is informing your opinion. California has only gotten more “progressive” with each election.

If that makes you happy, I hope you understand that it’s “progressive” policy which has caused crime to explode, housing prices to rise, and people to leave the state.

> hope you understand that it’s “progressive” policy which has caused crime to explode

Crime has not exploded in California. California’s violent crime rate rose in 2017—but it remains historically low. The statewide property crime rate decreased in 2017. Crime rates vary dramatically by region and category. Violent crime increased in a majority of counties but property crime decreased in most counties. [0]

[0]https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/

I don't trust any property crime "stat" in any moderately sized city. Every single person I know whose had property crime happen to them which is in multiple cities and states doesn't even bother reporting it because the cops won't do anything so it's just a waste of time.

Sounds like you’re the property criminal, because the odds of every single person you know having property crime committed against them is ridiculously low, unless you’re the one committing it.

"whose had property crime happen to them" refers only to the people I know who have had property crime happen to them, not everyone I know.

Most of the property crime is see from various places around here the past couple years has been theft and damage under $500 - not enough to make it worth filing an insurance claim, and police reports don't seem to do much around here, sometimes they tell you to call back in a day or two if you do call.

So there is plenty of crimes posted on the fbook / nextdoors / stuff like that were people are feeling victimized / but these are not going to show in any crime stats anywhere. Unless fbook has some AI run through and tabulate this stuff and report it by area one day..

You also can't see the impact from some stats. A neighbor recently had a naked guy pounding on her back door, they did get cops out for that one, arrested him from hiding inside here storage shed... with screenshots of the whole ordeal posted in a group - lots of people were a bit traumatized, yet you would see in the crime stats '1 arrested for trespass' - which does not give you a good idea of the impact on the community of this data point.

trying to reply to comment below, but I guess the thread is at max threshold.

I like to point to data for calming things down sometimes like the gun violence debate.. but often times there is much missed in looking at data from a far.

Plus, a couple of mayors ago, our city mad all the cops change how they report crimes (choose the softer things to charge people with so the stats look better) - and, officers were actively asking people not to press charges for things, go so far as explaining the process, and how we would spend hours in court and they would be off the streets doing important stuff for hours if we pressed charges, and that the person was not going to be in jail anyway..

Maybe things are different elsewhere and maybe in some places they have some of the same tricky data reporting, until we have all robot cops that run the same software in all cities, some of these things are going to be difficult to compare.

Insurance claims generally require a police report.

I would say it’s the lack of mental healthcare and a social safety net that causes all of the above. And it’s not possible to address on a state level as all the other states would ship the problems to the state that tries to offer the benefits.

> California has only gotten more “progressive” with each election.

That is different from "damping the extremes".

Why is it so difficult for those on the "conservative" side to believe that the election outcomes reflect the will of the populace when they actively reject "conservatism"?

> I hope you understand that it’s “progressive” policy which has caused crime to explode

This is a dog whistle way of saying "homelessness" as most crime has not exploded.

However, I have yet to see a conservative solution to homelessness short of "round them up and ship them somewhere else". aka part of the reason for California's homelessness is other, generally conservative, states shipping them in.

> housing prices to rise

A fair argument. And this is also a contributor to homelessness. Prop 13 is going to have to fall before anything really helps with this.

> and people to leave the state.

I'm still waiting for all these Republicans in Southern California to head to Texas. Any time now ...

What the article points out is that most people leaving California are, unfortunately, on the lower end of the income range. Conservatives like you should welcome this as they are generally Democratic Party folks.

Texas is actually the top state destination for people leaving California. I don't know whether we have any data about their political views.

https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/move-...

Do you know California is also the top state destination for people leaving Texas ? You know why ? It is because these are two largest states and they exchange population. The per year net migration to Texas is less than 0.1% of CA population.

only beneficial during the primary after the top candidates have been selected, which can both be extremely left-wing due to the caucus

There are plenty of republicans in california, they just run as democrats. Even Reagan used to be a DINO until he came out of the closet in support of Barry Goldwater's presidential run.

How is a jungle primary different from no primary and a free for-all-election with a run-off? Is the latter also corrupt?

>How is a jungle primary different from no primary and a free for-all-election with a run-off?

Majority/runoff with no primary would mean if a candidate gets an absolute majority on the first ballot, they win. You can't win at the primary in the jungle primary.

This is very wrong. Drive the 5 sometime. Outside of LA/SF it gets very red, very fast. Even within those areas it's only the centers that are truly "blue"; (AFAIK) Orange County is particularly conservative, for example, and it's always been my impression that places like Marin, Palo Alto and Orinda are the same way. It's where the term "California Republican" came from.

Look how long it took to legalize gay marriage and weed!

It's not even that it's one party. Since there's only two parties, there's a lot of variance within each, and you can be a Democrat without trying to make freelance work impossible, petty crime routine, streets smeared with human excrement and a trip in public transportation both rare and dangerous. I don't see why even somebody who would never vote Republican still can't choose not to vote for somebody like politicians who pushed through the idiotic AB5, for example. Or the ones who have been in charge for so many other ills plaguing modern California. I don't think it's party-against-party thing. If CA voters wanted, they could vote for much saner policies still well within the mainstream of Democrats (or at least something that has been mainstream of Democrats before 2016), but for some reason they do not.

California is a single party state in name only. There are plenty of conservatives who call themselves democrats in all levels of government. Many city councilmen in LA lean very conservatively in everything but the common sense stuff like not being a bigot, so they fly under the radar and people see the D by the name and vote them back in without reading a word of policy.