What is the Political Geography of California?

[Goldwater]

Dictatorship in the Soviet Union meant police breaking down your door and sending you to a prison camp in Siberia for 10 years for rumors that you said something objectionable. Leftism in San Francisco means you get dirty looks if you were a MAGA cap in public and you don't have enough power to get elected officials who agree with you. Not really the same.

I lived in the Soviet Union for almost 35 years since my birth. Who of us knows life there better?)))))

I'm sure you know it very well, and the analogy is still very hard to sustain.

Not so hard. Soviet Union (Brezhnev's, not Stalin's) is what strongly one-party areas like Bay Area (or Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma - you choose) may become in 20-25 years, if polarization will continue. Where only one point of view is respected and even tolerated... It's a warning about what must be avoided in any case...

So, what's the solution? Force people in the Bay Area to become more conservative? Force more conservatives to move to the bat area?

[Goldwater]

That's all i wanted to say on this subject. And it portends big problems in the future. After all -  talks about splitting California into up to 6 states arose mostly because of existing political situation, and they may be a harbringers of what will come...

An initiative to divide California into 3 states has been submitted for review by the Attorney General. It is much simpler than the 6 California proposal, and would simply give California's legislative consent to be divided into three states (when Kentucky, Maine, and West Virginia became states, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Virginia legislatures gave consent).

Virginia had given consent for the formation of Kentucky while the Constitution was being ratified. The Continental Congress decided not to act while the Constitution was pending. When Maine split off, a very large share of the population was in Maine, and one might have even conceived that a majority of the population would be in Maine. Consent for formation of West Virginia was given by the remnant of the legislature that was meeting in Wheeling. After West Virginia became a state, the Virginia legislature was dormant.

The three proposed states are:

California: Los Angeles to Monterey + San Benito.

Northern California: Everything else north of Merced/Mariposa, except Mono.

Southern California: Everything else south of Fresno/Madera, including Mono.

I misread "San Benito" as "San Bernardino", and was very confused for a moment.