It's a very good point. I find it very disingenuous to claim republicans are at fault in a blue state like Claifornia. The null hypothesis should be democrats are responsible for the state (good or bad) of California. Anyone, who claims otherwise, should provide evidences for their claim.
Good points.
First, what do the outcomes depend on? Policies of California state and local government are only limited factors. They do not create the economy, migration, weather, real estate development, etc. etc. (though they some limited effect on all of them). There are many other powers in the world. The government's power to control events is pretty limited.
Second, do we see any correlation between California government and these outcomes? Homelessness has existed worldwide probably for all time. A fundamental question is, with what is increased homelessness correlated?
Third, we don't know what the outcomes would be without the policy or with other policies. Negative outcomes don't indicate bad decisions - things could be worse. If you are dying of terminal disease, you don't assume the doctor's decisions are the cause, and therefore we'd be better off without healthcare. We are dealing with a difficult problem.
Finally, not all decisions and policies are partisan; people and publics are not politically consistent anwyay, and make policies for all sorts of reasons. And California has had Republican government on and off for a long time, and anything effects of government policy you see now are the outcome of decades of governance.
You can find a nice graphic of homelessness by state here: https://www.usich.gov/tools-for-action/map/#fn[]=1300&fn[]=2...
States like CA and NY seem to have the most growth in homeless population. That might be considered supporting evidence.
"They do not create the economy, migration, weather, real estate development, etc. etc. (though they some limited effect on all of them). There are many other powers in the world. The government's power to control events is pretty limited." I disagree with this statement, look at all the shutdowns as of late. The government seems to have almost unlimited power which court systems are unwilling to check, they can literally shut entire sectors of the economy down and stop home showings, in direct contradiction to your statement. In normal times they hold enormous influence over these sectors with licensing requirements, regulatory schemes, and political corruption. The result is migration, which also as of late has resulted in net outflows in CA, NY, and IL.
> The result is migration, which also as of late has resulted in net outflows in CA, NY, and IL.
Those outflows began decades before Coronoavirus.
This is a totally valid question. Wouldn't the overwhelming liberal majority rule in California be evidence in and of itself? I guess there could be liberals in name who enact conservative policy (or maybe little policy at all), but I haven't seen evidence of that.