Are We the Old Orange County Now ?

by: ocprogressive

Sun Aug 09, 2009 at 05:36:17 AM PDT

Included is one of my favorites quotes from Lisa McGirr's Suburban Warriors on the history of our fair county, harking back more than forty years;

This suburban heartland was not only home to Walt Disney's visionary new park, to thousands of new California families and new towns and cities; it was also the birthing ground of a powerful grassroots political movement. A revitalized and militant Right--fueled by a politics of antistatism, virulent anticommunism, and strict normative conservatism--burst onto the scene nationally in the early 1960s, and nowhere more forcefully than Orange County. At living room bridge clubs, at backyard barbecues, and at kitchen coffee klatches, the middle-class men and women of Orange County "awakened" to what they perceived as the threats of communism and liberalism ... The characteristics of Orange County's development--its specific form of economic growth, the domination of its politics by an antiliberal and anti-eastern business elite, and the experiences of the people who settled there--created a favorable context for virulent right-wing beliefs.

But on to the question. If Placer County is the new Orange County, what are we?

We're certainly not the land of suburban warriors working in the military-industrial complex, although many of the folks who fled LA after the '65 riots are still here and still voting.

We're certainly not just a collection of bedroom suburbs, as there are more daily commuters coming to work from Los Angeles County into Orange County than the other way.

And we're certainly not the political entity we were even a decade ago. If Obama can carry Chuck Devore's Assembly district by 8,721 votes, all of the old stereotypes about Orange County start falling by the wayside.

Yet we still remain curiously amorphous, over three million people with over 34 cities and no downtown, trapped in a stereotype of angry white suburbia that we're rapidly outgrowing.

Within the next decade, as the generation that fled LA dies off, we'll become a very different place. Meanwhile, we're governed by echoes of the 60's.

Four Obama Inspired Lessons for California Democrats

by: Michael Fox

Thu Jan 29, 2009 at 17:26:29 PM PST

The Obama campaign should serve as a master class in winning elections for Democrats.

Unfortunately, not enough California Democrats are playing attention to the Obama campaign's most important lessons.

As the effects of the state's budget crisis and the nation's economic meltdown hit more and more California voters, the Democratic Party has a once in a generation opportunity to convince voters that it that will protect and defend their interests far better than the Republicans, as well as make fundamental and progressive changes in the way that California is governed.

But to do so will require that Democrats embrace and implement the lessons of the Obama campaign.

These lessons are:

1. Blame Republicans and Present a Democratic Solution
2. Use the Internet
3. Expand the Electorate
4. Champion the Middle Class

Let's look at them one at a time.