While we love our RedState readers, I think they’re missing the point. And so are a lot of other Americans.

To those people who say we deserve what we get, I say: Do you deserve Joe Biden? Did you vote for him, his inflation, his gas prices, his economy, his spending? If you did, then you’re right—you do deserve what you’re getting. But if you’re one of the 74 million people who didn’t…. you don’t.

And we in California don’t deserve what we’re getting from our far-Left leadership, either.

What most people don’t understand is that there are a huge amount of Republican voters here in the Golden State, those who voted for Ronald Reagan, Pete Wilson, and even Arnold Schwarzenegger (cough cough). It’s not that we don’t exist—it’s simply that we’re outnumbered.

I have no judgment for those who simply can’t make CA work for their families & need to leave. It’s a hard choice to make bc this is such a beautiful state. But the answer to everything isn’t to pick up our toys & go home. At some point we need to give up or take over.

— Kira (@RealKiraDavis) April 16, 2021

Why should you care if you don’t live here? Quite simply, what starts in California often spreads to the rest of the country. Four years ago, my own dear wife wrote these words:

Lest you think, from your perch in a state with no income tax, or one where you can actually be a registered Republican and not worry about losing friends or your livelihood or even your health, that the sorry state of California politics doesn’t affect you, think again. Almost every bad idea in current American nanny statehood came from out west. When a state this big mandates that textbooks, for example, highlight the contributions of LGBT people, companies aren’t printing two sets of books. The entire country falls in line. When our legislators, “drunk on virtue” as Lionel Shriver says, ban plastic straws, bags and God knows what else, companies around the country trip over themselves to show their allegiance to the mighty once-Golden State.

California is by far the most populous state in the Union with almost 40 million residents, so you can’t just write it off and pretend it doesn’t exist. It also has the largest economy of any state, and with its $3.4 trillion gross state product as of 2021, would be the fifth largest economy in the entire world if it were a country. Ignore what’s happening here at your own peril.

Leave CA for a few days. A day even. I do this periodically to give myself hope.

— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@pnjaban) May 6, 2022

Take the awful, gig-economy killing Assembly Bill AB5 which is currently going into effect. It will destroy the livelihoods of tens of thousands of truckers, endanger our supply chain even more, and make us even more beholden to unions. Think it doesn’t matter? Well, Joe Biden has already taken notice and wants to replicate it on a national scale. That should make you pay attention.

Oh, but there’s more, so much more.

Our gravelly-voiced, telegenic, hair-gelled scion of the privileged talks “equity” (a war against white people), “women’s freedom” (abortion up until birth), “gun safety” (we will take away your right to self defense), ”environmental prudence” (we will kill traditional energy, no matter how much it destroys the food supply and your ability to keep your lights on), and on so many other topics; he offers reasonable-sounding solutions that have the capacity to destroy American life as we know it.

Think I’m being hyperbolic? Just take a look at the recent history of Venezuela, formerly a prosperous nation, now just another tragic footnote in the textbooks as generational wealth has been completely wiped out, technological progress has been sent back to the stone age, and its currency rendered absolutely worthless.

Think it can’t happen here? Think of the wasteland that is California—San Francisco has some of the wealthiest people in the world Zooming into the Google campus while ignoring a Calcutta-like depravity of drug addicts dying on their streets, defecating on the sidewalk as their last gift, the Lepers of the modern era.

The COVID madness that so many of you escaped? Consider yourselves lucky—for now. We here in the nation’s breadbasket endured over one and a half years of our kids being locked out of schools, and out-of-control vaccine mandates which cost an untold number of people their livelihoods… But did we fare any better than “free states?” Nope. Now they’re desperately trying to bring back mask mandates, despite the incontrovertible harm it caused our kids and our population. Think you’re in the clear, and that it’s only us La-La Land suckers who this could happen to?

Think again.

Conservatives: Leave no man behind! Ever! To do anything less is cowardly and pathetic.

Also Conservatives: Nothing left to save in CA. Time to abandon ship and all the good people still fighting there. You're a moron if you don't leave!

Pick a lane.

— Kira (@RealKiraDavis) September 16, 2021

Keep ignoring California, folks. But do so at your own peril. Who could have imagined, just a few years ago, that an energy-killing, America-hating president such as Joe Biden could be running the country we once knew as the United States of America?

Gird your loins, because in my view Governor Gavin Newsom has the best shot left in the field to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2024. Granted, I can’t stand him, but he’s got a war chest so vast he’s already running ads in Florida and Texas, despite having his own gubernatorial election coming up in November. He’s so certain to win that he’s not even bothering to campaign here—it’s a done deal.

Check out his competition: current President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. Do I have to even bother with this guy? He’s a mental and physical wreck the likes we haven’t seen since Woodrow Wilson, whose wife Edith Bolling Galt Wilson secretly ran the country from 1919 to 1921 after he suffered a stroke. Many argue that “Dr.” Jill Biden is already doing that now.

Enter former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. He’s actually the front-runner in several polls, but does anybody take this guy seriously? Not only is he a failed mayor who couldn’t fix the potholes, but he’s been a farce who emits profound-sounding woke goals while being utterly ineffective in dealing with the air travel nightmares, the supply chain debacles, or virtually anything else.

Kamala Harris? Do I have to even keep typing? Ok fine, she’s a walking Caesar word-salad without the croutons.  A Caesar salad without croutons is just lettuce and anchovies. No one, not even what remains of her staff, takes her seriously.

Why bother with the others? Socialist nutcase Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, faux-Native-American huckster Elizabeth Warren of wherever?  As Joe likes to say, “c’mon man!” Not one of these social media personalities is a serious contender to be president, which leaves us with… Gavin Newsom.  A recent Turning Point USA poll shows he would be the “hardest Democratic candidate for a Republican to beat” in 2024.

Don’t tell me what happens here doesn’t matter, and that we deserve what we are getting. We’re fighting hard because we don’t want this to be your fate. Nashville, Tennessee, Bozeman, Montana, Boise, Idaho, the states of Utah, Colorado, and Florida—are you listening?

It’s time to stop pretending California doesn’t matter. It might very well be coming to you quite soon—and no one deserves that.