Why conservatism’s success depends on California’s failure

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few years, you’ve probably noticed that conservatives hate California. In fact, it’s an obsession.

Donald Trump’s disdain for the state is well known. But conservative anti-California animus goes beyond Trump.

The enduring sources of these fusillades are conservative thought leaders. And as they portray it, the Golden State is a Banana Republic. It’s a violent, poverty-stricken homeless infernal dystopia overrun by MS-13 and misled by incompetent criminal-coddling politicians whose radical, immigrant-loving, left-wing agenda is horrible for businesses, which are leaving the state in droves.

For them, California is the quintessence of liberalism’s — or socialism’s — failure. All of the state’s problems for conservatives are always the direct fault of its “far-left” policies.

In a December screed called “The slow, painful death of California,” Fox News’ Tucker Carlson warned, “The policies that destroyed America’s largest and most economically important state are heading your way.”

Not one to resist attacking California, the editorial board at the Wall Street Journal published a piece entitled “California’s Covid Woes,” which blamed overcrowded hospitals and long wait times on MediCal.

Curiously, the WSJ’s attack, which compared California’s COVID record unfavorably to Texas, never once mentioned the most important statistic: California’s mortality rate, which, at the time of writing, was 30% below Texas’ and 36% below the nation’s.

Of course, there’s little wonder why they omitted that statistic: including it would have undermine their entire argument. After all, it’s pretty hard to portray California’s response to the pandemic as woeful when we’re dying less often than the rest of the nation.

And it’s what’s missing from conservative jeremiads that’s interesting. It’s their tell.

Here’s what you won’t read in their screeds:

Does business hate California?

This might be the biggest lie. While California is home to 12% of the population, we attracted 51% of the most sought-after investment last year, according to National Venture Capital Association data. The $81 billion in venture capital that we attracted in 2020 was a 22% increase over 2019 and the highest amount California has attracted in 14 of the past 15 years, per NVCA.

Investment is one thing. What about incomes?

We’re the fifth most productive population in the country. In 2019, we produced more economic output on a per person basis than 45 other states, according to the BEA.

Are our families destitute? Well, in 2019, the average household took home more than 45 other states and 122% more than the national average.

Is California the murder capital of America? You were more likely to get killed in 27 other states in 2018, per the CDC. That year, you were 127% more likely to get killed in Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky.

Speaking of death, our workplaces are safer. In 2019, California employees were less likely to die on the job than in 43 other states, per the BEA.

And there’s this: We live longer here than 48 other states, per Kaiser Family Foundation data. Californians get two years, seven months and nine days more life than most Americans.

These are inconvenient facts for conservatives. There’s a reason they omit them. California’s successes defy conservative cosmology, which holds that taxes, unions, workplace safety rules, environmental protections and immigrants repel capital, kill economies, hurt families and denigrate life itself.

But the fact that we attract more capital, create more wealth, take home higher incomes, have safer streets, die less on the job and live longer contradicts everything GOP orthodoxy predicts.

Quite simply, for conservatism itself to be right, California must be wrong.

CORRECTION: The headline on this piece has been updated to correct a misspelling of “conservatism.”

This story was originally published May 31, 2021 at 5:00 AM.