Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois

Re:Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where? by pandaman on Saturday January 18, 2020 @05:24PM (#22087746)

>What I'm predominantly responding to is this weird way people seem to look at these liberal cities and go "oh, they've succeeded in spite of their liberalness" instead of those being part of why they became desirable places to live in the first place.

Why would you think so? For example California used to be if not a Red State then a heavily leaning Republican: since 1880 until 2000 it has not voted for a Democratic president who has not also won the national election (and the 1880 election was extremely close). In the same time period it voted for a Republican candidate who lost the election multiple times (e.g. it voted against JFK and Carter).

Do you really believe that California had not been desirable before it started voting exclusively D (in 1992 the earliest)? I had not been living in the US at the time but judging by the popular culture it does not seem to be the case.

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Re:Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where? by RangerScience on Saturday January 18, 2020 @06:23PM (#22088105)

> Why would you think so?

Well asked! I've been trying to understand why I do.

I think it comes to this: Good places to live come from encouraging and empowering people to make those places their own, as communities.

What it means to be a democrat or a republican changes from place and decade to decade. What is effective in actualizing that community participation then also changes as a place changes over time (ironically, that's also why it's important to have that community participation).

AFAIK, the Republican party _used_ to stand for small, decentralized government; now they stand for ineffective and centralized government (despite the talking points).

I'm less clear on what the Democrats "used to be" (except racist, way back in the day), except that in this era and in these places, community participation is hampered by unaffordable housing, unaffordable and/or inaccessible healthcare, and a lack of living wages.

I know I haven't fully answered your question, but I've been at this for far too long. Thanks for asking so effectively!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where? by pandaman on Saturday January 18, 2020 @07:31PM (#22088493)

If you think it's just the parties that have changed, then how about actual policies? Prop 187 has been passed in 1994 with 59% majority, can you imagine anything like that happening in California nowadays? No matter how you see DNC and GOP of 1990s, you surely can see that the California's attitude towards illegal immigrants has completely reversed now.

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Re:Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where? by RangerScience on Sunday January 19, 2020 @06:58AM (#22090924)

It's definitely not just the parties that have changed. I have no idea whether that law would've passed today; everyone hears "California" and thinks about SF/LA, forgetting about the large conservative areas. Look how long weed and gay marriage took.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where? by pandaman on Sunday January 19, 2020 @01:12PM (#22092868)

Gay marriage was never passed by popular vote in California, it was a result of judicial activism both on the state level and on federal. In fact, CA voted against gay marriage in Prop 8.

However, the fact that party vote in California changed in 90s, when it's been already a prosperous and desirable state remains. So it does not seem plausible that liberal policies turned it into one. The opposite though, is completely believable - in a rich locale, with a lot of money, politicians who use the money to "buy" votes will eventually rise and will remain in power until the money's gone.

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