Trump’s rhetoric sends clear message to California politicos

A group of California residents wants to secede from the United States and who can blame them after Tuesday’s presidential election?

The problem is this, they will have a hard time making California great again. After Hillary Clinton and Donna Brazile, the Golden State had to be the biggest loser in the elevation of Donald J. Trump to our nation’s highest office. 

{mosads}Think about it. Fully 41 of California’s 53 congressional seats could be held by Democrats when Trump takes office on Jan 20. Both of the state’s senators, including newly elected Kamala Harris are from the left side of the aisle as well. California Democrats will be left in the cold while Trump and congress gut Obamacare, lock out immigrants and set about returning our country to the 1980s. Talk about an impotent group.

Just a couple of weeks ago we learned that L.A.’s vapid pretty boy Mayor Eric Garcetti was on the short list of potential Clinton VP appointees, now he’s probably worried that Trump’s election will prevent L.A. from getting the 2024 Olympic Games.

That’s a huge swing.

“For some of the IOC members, they would say, ‘Wait a second, can we go to a country like that, where we’ve heard things that we take offense to?”’ Garcetti told Bloomberg in August.

Well if they don’t take offense to the startling homeless problem, the woeful lack of public oversight when it comes to the Los Angeles Police Department or the constant gridlock on the L.A. freeways, I guess that only leaves Trump’s racism and misogyny to be concerned about right?

The truth is far more practical.

If LA doesn’t get the Olympics, or California misses out on some massive federal contracting dollars when it comes to building the Taj Mahal of great walls on the Mexico border, it isn’t because someone took offense, it’s because California backed a loser.

Side note, if you want to get in on some of the winning action before it’s too late, now is the time to invest in marijuana. It’s the plastics of our age.

But it’s funny how a decisive election can change so much. 

On Thursday night Kellyanne Conway explained to Anderson Cooper that voters felt Trump gave a “voice to the forgotten-man, and forgotten-woman.”  Cooper thought it was so profound he even tweeted the line.

It’s a theme that might come to dominate the California gubernatorial election in 2018. Take Garcetti’s predecessor Antonio Villaraigosa for example. 

A well-known horse player and bon vivant, Villaraigosa hopes to win election to the office and within hours of Trump’s victory, proved he could read between the lines.

“I think that the way to restore the luster of the California dream is to give voice to more Californians, to focus on parts of the state that frankly have been left behind, that haven’t had a voice,” Villaraigosa said in a telephone interview with the Los Angeles Daily News. “I think it’s been clear who has been left behind. We saw that in this campaign. I think we heard from working people and people in the middle class who feel like the economy is not working for them.”

Sound familiar? Seems like the only thing left out is a campaign slogan. Wanna bet it will be something like “Make California Great Again”?

Girardot is an award-winning former editor and columnist with the Los Angeles News Group. He is co-author of true crime tales “A Taste For Murder” and the soon-to-be released “Betrayal in Blue: The Shocking Memoir of the Scandal that Rocked the NYPD.” Follow him on Twitter @FrankGirardot

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