After the election results in California, the left must organize and fight | Ben Davis

Progressive movements that have built power in cities across the country are facing a well-financed backlash from entrenched interests they vowed to fix

There are a few clear lessons from the recent primary elections in California. The first is that California is still a one-party state. The second is that once partisanship is removed in the eyes of voters, conservative forces have a lot of room to operate. Despite their failure at a federal level, conservative forces are on the move in California using a playbook that will be repeated across the country.

In California's top statewide races, Democrats easily finished with a large majority of votes across the board, with Republicans struggling to even approach 40% of the statewide vote. As recently as a decade ago, Republicans in California could threaten Democrats when they had an advantage in the national climate. Today, there's effectively no threat of Republicans being involved in state-level governing. Republicans may pick up a few seats in California if there ends up being a massive Republican wave this fall, but they are still a defeated force at the federal and state level in all but a few pockets of California.

Ben Davis works in political data in Washington DC. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign and is an active member of the Democratic Socialists of America