In Trump era, the country can learn from California

The palpable disappointment among Hillary Clinton voters regarding the 2016 presidential election is clear across the country as the world braces for a President Donald Trump.

Whether via social media, in the streets, or in the privacy of their own homes, Clinton’s win of the popular vote will only further inflame those who have been chanting “Not Our President” since Election Day.

{mosads}Many in the center-right who were hostile to the idea of a Trump presidency during the campaign are now preaching patience and/or prayer for Trump to be a good president. Longtime NBA on TNT commentator Ernie Johnson went public that he wrote in John Kasich’s name for president but would pray for Trump. Conservative commentator Jon Fleischman, publisher of Flash Report, tweeted, “If a good person can be a bad President, it stands to reason that a bad person can be a good President. Fingers crossed.”

None of this assuages the grief and disbelief on the left, particularly among young people, most of whom came of political age during the victories of President Obama. Remember, the 2000 election was 16 years ago, and the anger and disappointment among those who saw President George W. Bush win the electoral college but lose the popular vote is not part of most young voters’ conscious memory; they learned about it in history class.

The visceral grief among younger voters is certainly understandable as the first full-scale defeat of their generation’s political age. That said, feelings are raw across generations, as parents grapple with how to talk to their kids about this election, and women of Clinton’s generation worry they lost their last best chance to make history.

What is a Clinton voter to do? Without in any way diminishing the rawness of the feelings or the righteous anger and fear gripping over 50 percent of our country, the path forward must be charted.

Many demographers suggest that “as California goes, so will the rest of the country.”

Specifically, racial and ethnic diversification, along with immigrant integration in the nation’s most populous state, occurred in the 1990s, decades before the demographic changes the rest of the nation is trying to grapple with in 2016.

Our country is at a difficult turning point – one that California found itself in during the 1990s, pointing disenchanted voters around the country – those who participated in Occupy Wall Street and those who did not – toward one pathway out of despair.

Recall where California was in 1992. Los Angeles was left smoldering following the acquittal of police officers who beat Rodney King. Two years later many whites and advocates against domestic violence were outraged as OJ Simpson was acquitted by a jury for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

California was a simmering cauldron, with a conservative governor who sought to emulate one of his predecessors, Ronald Reagan, with his inflammatory rhetoric. Some would say police shootings continue and rapists like Brock Turner get flimsy sentences; nothing has changed. They would be incorrect.

While the conventional stereotype of California is bleeding heart liberal, these demographic changes and more importantly political entrepreneurs like former Gov. Pete Wilson’s exploitation of anxieties about such changes, produced at least 5 California initiatives that created serious challenges to the more diverse and equitable state many residents had hoped for. Some of those propositions were well-known:

Proposition 187 outlawed public benefits for undocumented immigrants, and Proposition 184, known as the “Three Strikes Law;” both passed in 1994 by popular vote among Californians.

Two years later, Proposition 209, cynically entitled “California Civil Rights Initiative,” banned all affirmative action by state agencies, including in college admissions, passed by popular vote. Proposition 22 in 2000 and Proposition 8 in 2008 both banned California from recognizing same-sex marriages.

Both passed by popular vote, including in a year when California helped elect America’s first Black president.

Now, in 2016, all but one of these initiatives has either been repealed, declared unconstitutional, or otherwise significantly reformed. How did this happen? Did Californians somehow swap out all of its voters with another group of voters? Not at all.

From the outside looking into California, it would seem like all of the changes passed in 2012 and 2016 are an overnight success or just true blue California doing what it always does. Far from it. Instead, Californians who believed in working for immigrant rights, criminal justice reform, tax reform and same sex marriage got busy. They got engaged in off-years from the presidential campaign. They organized and developed state-wide campaigns that won (and, at times, lost) approval by raising the money and electing the state legislators to also buttress this agenda. Significant criminal justice reform passed in 2012 and 2016, as did tax increases on the wealthiest to support desperately needed educational funding. Progressive Californians haven’t won everything they’ve wanted – they lost the best chance to repeal the death penalty in a generation and a battle on controlling the cost of prescription drugs in this election. It has been and will continue to be a bumpy ride, but California is not where it was in 1992.

To be sure, California had a strong Democratic party in the state legislature – then and now. But the quirk of the initiative process is that the legislature cannot repeal voter-led initiatives. Thus while the legislature could dampen some of the harshest effects of such initiatives, they could not fully repeal them. It was up to the people of California.

And now, America, it is up to you. If you are devastated by this election’s results, roll up your sleeves and get ready to work harder than you’ve ever worked at the state level, whether you have a robust initiative process or must work through your legislatures and governors. Finding out what kind of state system you have is the first step. Above all: stay calm, and organize, organize, organize.

Hancock is an associate professor of gender studies, political science and sociology at the University of Southern California and the founder of RISIST: The Research Institute for the Study of Intersectionality and Social Transformation. Follow her on Twitter @AngeMarieH 

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