Reply #40: Lot of truth there. Union losses are also a factor

[Xithras]

The Democratic party in this state has a numeric advantage which has held us in power for so long that many in the leadership seem to have forgotten how to campaign. The Thug challengers in past elections, after all, were really more there for show than anything.

Part of the problem, IMO, is that California has lost much of its manufacturing base to offshoring and relocation to other lower cost states. Since the manufacturing base was once the focus of union activity, they provided an effective conduit to push the Democratic message to working blue collar workers. With the loss of manufacturing, we also lost those unions. Without those unions, we no longer have shop stewards reminding co-workers to vote, and union reps sending out voter guides to workers. The most powerful unions in the state today are ALL government employee unions, and while they're powerful they aren't numerically large enough to drive elections the way the old manufacturing unions did.

We're still the numeric majority, but I know for a fact that many Democrats simply don't vote. It's not that they're apathetic, it's just that they tend to get so wrapped up in their own lives that politics becomes a secondary issue. I've run into genuine flaming liberals who, come election day, completely forget that they need to go vote. The worker diaspora that followed the loss of manufacturing has made people like that almost unreachable.