Yes. California is N/A.

Writing at RealClear Politics, Susan Crabtree notes the inevitable jumps to conclusions performed by the Democrats after their all-out campaign to save Gavin Newsom's hide succeeded last week in California:

The only way to go was up, so they ... kept digging!? (Image by Josh Kahen, via Unsplash, license.)

... President Biden deemed the recall's landslide defeat a "resounding win" for Democrats and his administration's vaccine and COVID-related mandates. California voters rejected the "Republican brand that is centered around insurrection and denying the pandemic," Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told reporters Wednesday.

The true takeaway is far more basic. Republicans never stood a chance without a big-name mainstream celebrity running in a state where Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden by nearly 30 percentage points last fall and registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 2-to-1 margin. [bold added]

Or, as GOP consultant Matt Gorman put it more tersely, "[That's] like me bragging about winning a [campaign] in Alabama." (This is true, but the GOP's allegiance to Donald Trump is doing it no favors.)

The piece also hypothesizes that the November gubernatorial race in Virginia, where both parties are competitive, will be a much better gauge of the national mood. I am inclined to agree.

Until and unless the people of California begin to realize that many of their state's biggest problems are a direct result of the policies enacted by the people they elect, and consider the alternative of greater freedom, they will become increasingly irrelevant to national politics -- beyond the fact that they can be counted on to provide a bloc of left-wing officials to the House and Senate, and handicap the Republicans in every presidential race.

At best, one could say that many Californians reacted quite strongly against the GOP due to its foolish continued allegiance to Donald Trump, but I suspect that, since Trump is basically an abrasive version of an old-fashioned Democrat, a lot of that is for the wrong reasons, and certainly not because they share my wish that the GOP upheld capitalism.

To the rest of us, it boggles the mind to see Newsom, so plainly unfit for office, not booted out, if only for the purpose of sending a wake-up call to his party. Indeed, Republicans might do well to consider running against California in those states with enough voters who might be receptive to an alternative to the likes of Newsom, Pelosi, Feinstein, Harris, and other similar examples of the ... sensibilities ... of that place.

-- CAV