California politics make most sense when you understand the state understands itself as the shining future as seen from 1974

Xavier Becerra at HHS, like Hilda Solis at Labor before him, is about installing a good state party machine loyalist atop one of the most machine-potential departments and is mostly significant for how it affects California politics – as he was state AG this opens up a new statewide office for climbers.

With a huge population, a term-limited state legislature, only two senators, one set of constitutional offices, and waiting lists for every federal district, the musical-chairs aspect of just providing enough places for ambitious pols to go is getting to be an important way the national Dems service the state party.

In theory, the California Dems should be the party of everybody. And, they are, that’s kind of the issue, they’re the party of Scott Weiner and of everyone who hates Scott Weiner. Keeping promises to retirees that they can always live like it’s 1966, established yuppies that they can always live like it’s 1978, immigrants that they can always live like it’s 1995 (Texas took over the promise that the white get-er-done class could always live like it was 1984)

Meanwhile no one really wants to live in 2020, but addressing that threatens to upset the state Dems in a way that the national party sees no advantage in over a stable one-party state