A Dead Party
By 
The California Republican Party is dead and buried in the ground.
In a year when control of the Senate hangs in the balance—a year in which both parties are competing feverishly for every advantage—California’s seat is up for grabs. Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat who was first elected to the Senate in 1992, is retiring.
But instead of a contest between a Democrat and a Republican in the state that once saw some of the most intensely partisan and politically engaged Senate races in the country, the fight to fill Boxer’s seat will be between two Democrats.
Under California’s nonpartisan “blanket primary” law, which was enacted by the voters in 2010, Tuesday’s Senate primary ballot featured all the candidates on one list. Democrats, Republicans, and several dozen third-party and independent candidates competed against one another in a race where only the top two finishers could earn a place on the November ballot.
That would not have been much of a challenge for a functional Republican Party. But it was an insurmountable challenge for the California Republican Party. Several GOP contenders hit the campaign trail, but none of them got anywhere close to being competitive. They simply split a minority of the vote and languished in single digits.
To be fair, the blanket primary law is pure Third Way bullshit, designed to make sure that reasonable moderates acceptable to elites are elected so that, in precisely this situation, Republicans can have a conservative Democrat to vote for, even though her own party doesn’t want Sanchez to be in the November election. But this situation also shows just how dead California Republicans have come. And given the reasons for that (thanks Pete Wilson!) and the changing demographics of the United States, this could happen in more states if the Republicans continue their ever more intense commitment to white supremacy. Now, that will reinforce the party in some states, but Kansas and Idaho does not a successful party make.
But in the short term, Trump should totally try to win California. Please expend as many resources as possible there. As a Democrat, I am very scared of this possibility!