Like @ezraklein I was born and raised in OC and educated at a UC. He is right to point to some of CA's problems. But they aren't a sign "progressivism cannot work here". It's a sign corporate/right-wing power hasn't been sufficiently broken.

In the late 1970s an alliance of suburbanites, corporations, and right-wingers rigged state government to make it nearly impossible to use CA's power to meet the full scope of human needs, from housing to schools to jobs.

Over the last 40+ years progressives have had growing success chipping away at that edifice. But it's a struggle. Props 15 and 22 demonstrate the obstacles that remain.

(Rather, the failure of Prop 15.)