Is California Too Exceptional to Be Part of the U.S.?
We're a Progressive Check on Red-State Power—but We Unbalance the Constitutional System
America is terribly polarized.
And it’s all on account of California.
The trouble is not merely that California itself is such a politically polarized place. Or that California contributes to the many causes of polarization: partisan media, ideological movements, cultural atomization, big-money politics, technological change, economic anxiety, and income inequality.
No, the artichoke heart of the matter is that California is simply too big, too exceptional, and too 21st-century to fit an America governed by 18th-century rules and mid-20th-century nostalgia.
The way in which California fuels the polarization of national politics is paradoxical: …
