What's The Future of California Governance?
Harris for governor? Is Wes Moore the next Democratic presidential candidate?
The earliest maps of California from 1636 and 1731 depicted it as an island and indeed in some ways it still is.
To the West, the Pacific Ocean. To the North the Pacific Northwest. To the East, there’s Deseret, always tolling anyone who comes across its lands. To the South, Mexico, both a part of and apart from California’s history.
The weather, the people, the conversation, the industries — all of them are very different from anything we are acquainted with here on the East Coast. My father pointed out some of the micro climates and the flora and fauna that made his childhood so memorable.
There’s a magic in California, notwithstanding its recent poor governance, and recapturing that savoir faire is going to be a big part of placing California back at the center of the national conversation.
A recent visit to Southern California makes me wonder what the future of California might be and who might lead it. And, of course, I wondered how I might be a part of those necessary efforts.
Let’s consider the state’s future closely as the fires, the damage from which I toured in historically-black Altadena, might be the kind of incendiary push needed to birth a phoenix.
A poll brings news that Kamala Harris may enter the race for Governor of California. I hope she does and if she does, I’ll support her. She belongs in the Golden State and in the City of Angels. But what should she actually do?
There’s a case to be made that this 2024 presidential race was really a contest between inbreeders and out breeders and that the inbreeders won. Or so it would appear.
I suspect you’ll see the Democrats return to things that worked a bit more. It was probably too many things at once — first woman president, first South Asian president, etc. — and you’ll see a rush to simplify things.
As much as I would have liked Harris to win, I think the comedian Bill Burr was correct when he noted that the “ladies” were 0 in 2 against the Donald. There should be a lot more introspection about why that was. Maybe the Democrats need white men a lot more than they’d care to admit.
I actually saw Bill Burr in person at Cassell’s in Koreatown. He was with his boy. I congratulated Burr on his standup.
He’s right. The Democrats have a lot to learn about appealing to a popular, mass culture. Too much of 2024 came across as more than a little weird. Vibes don’t pay bills. The country, for better and for worse, is where Trump is on abortion. Let each state make the decision. Be a bit more calmed down on the culture war stuff. It doesn’t work to get people so riled up.
And contrary Governor Tim Walz, we are weird country and that’s a good thing. And he, of all people, should know that! He’s a weird guy too! Frankly he should have leaned into it a little bit more.
Our motto ought to be you can be eccentric but only for Uncle Sam. Nobody really cares about your personal life or your strange ideas if they perceive you as being on their side.
The recent elevation of Ken Martin, the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor, suggests a desire to return to a more agricultural friendly Democratic Party. And yet we live in a very technological age. I suspect the next Democratic president will come from a kind of alliance between labor, agriculture and technology.
It’s always dangerous to peer out into the future but let me submit to you that I think the next Democratic president could well be Governor Wes Moore of Maryland. That seems to have been what Speaker Willie Brown, who was, after all Kamala Harris’s mentor, suggested when he said that Moore was next “if he plays it right.”
But Charles isn’t Wes Moore participating in stolen valor by claiming medals he didn’t, in fact, have? I have an easy rejoinder to that — “Do you really think the state that has Fort Meade in it would tolerate someone who wasn’t onboard with them”? Besides, Governor Moore got the medal he deserved, albeit 18 years later.
I have been to award ceremonies of people who were not officially in the military but who nevertheless received commendations so the notion that Moore was fibbing about an award he likely received I find hard to believe. Why Moore doesn’t come out and say that, I can’t say, but could it be because he is still on assignment? I wonder…
We’ve explored ad nauseam the role of the National Security Agency in creating new technology. Might there be other government agencies working accordingly?
Technology, especially tied to Israel, Russia and China, was ultimately what did in President Kamala Harris. Do you really believe that Elon Musk was liquid enough to pump just shy of $200 million into the U.S. presidential elections? Or did he have help from his patron Xi Jinping who needs Elon’s antics to harm American focus?
Elon is always quite useful to his Chinese masters and it’s easy to see that the Chinese want him soaking up attention and distracting America from making its own transition to electric vehicles that don’t include Tesla. Those BYD vehicles are the only real sign of growth coming from the Chinese economy.
Vice President Kamala Harris has an opportunity to have real technology companies located in California. Harris began her political career in Northern California but Southern California is where all the action is going to be. She seems to know as much as she’s kept her home in Brentwood.
Should she make her focus transferring the California economy into less of a rentier one and more of a technologically-driven one, she’ll have my support. We tried the world where California real estate was owned by AirBNB. It didn’t work for either the landlords or the tenants. California’s innumerable hotels should be housing — or renovated hotels.
It wasn’t always this way. When my family first moved to California in the 1930s there were so many interesting companies and industries sprouting up. Now there’s all this conversation about what could have or might have been. There’s a kind of California nostalgia and the population is declining relative to Texas and Florida, which bested California in the last presidential election by electing New York transplant Donald Trump to the presidency.
To reframe the politics California will need to embrace real technology that makes the quality of life better for her citizens.
California is the fifth largest economy in the world. Of course it should help build and design the next generation of transportation. It’s somewhat perplexing that I should even have to say that. If lesser economies — India, France and the United Kingdom, say — have a state-supported motor vehicle programs, so too should the Golden State.California is about 14 percent of the American economy. What it does matters, especially on matters of regulation. All the more reason California should embrace companies like e-bike manufacturer LAND Moto and solar powered car Aptera.
In the Central Valley, just 1 percent of the country’s farmland produces 8 percent of U.S. food supply. You can see why there was this Chinese biolab right nearby in Reedley, California. You can also begin to understand why it’s essential that we know everything about the people coming and going in the Central Valley and why this will logically lead to a guest worker program enforced with strenuous biometrics requirements.
The dark future I imagine is a bit like Twelve Monkeys, minus the time travel, where corporate interests aligned with cults and foreign governments drive up the cost of food with carefully tailored viruses designed to harm food prices. It isn’t as far fetched as you would think.
We’re going to need environmental DNA readers sucking up the air and analyzing who and what is there. That’ll mean we need serious genetic sequencing labs and that we’re going to need reference samples.
Every Californian port of entry and possibly every plane or ship entering California is going to need genetic sniffers sampling the air to avoid invasive species coming into the state.
I’m fine with California having high speed rail but we all know most people get around in cars, bicycles or motorcycles.
I suspect Los Angeles itself will get more dense between now and the Olympics arriving. This is a good thing but it’ll mean that we have to think seriously about how we might use technology to reduce crime. We can techify the police and reduce crime.
Similarly you can imagine a California governor working so that everyone who wants to be genetically sequenced can be sequenced for free. California already takes a blood spot of every child born in the state.
California is getting drier but I envision a California where it flies drones to monitor the air. Companies like Solar-powered Skydweller or battery-powered like Censys Tech could be useful here.
The trick isn’t to establish California as a kind of sanctuary state but as a kind of visionary one where people are reminded of why so many were drawn to it for so long.
Of course none of this will be possible without fully embracing California’s unique role in American history. Her next governor needs to embrace the tribes — all of California’s tribes — and change its story with a coalition government.
We need a better group, working together to fix the state’s serious woes.
It’s hard to imagine that she’d run. The utter collapse of the urban environments in California has the stench of DEI about it. DEI is as popular as the Kamala Kackle and Harris is the DEI Death Star. Democrat heavies want her under the bus, and they want the tires of the bus deflated. The political environment in California is ripe for an Arnold-like Republican to surprise everyone.