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> The proposition that made California the way it is is the one that meant that the primaries are non-partisan and the final race is between the two top contenders.

No, it's not.

It's not even a proposition. It's that the California Republican Party tries to campaign like it's Kansas, that keeps them hovering right at the border of the level where Democrats have a 2/3 supermajority in both houses plus control of the statewide offices.

> This means that special interests in California need only present their cause through the lens of leftism and they will automatically find sympathetic candidates in the top two,

It's actually pretty rare that the jungle primary provides same party candidates (and it's never, IIRC, done “Democrat plus leftist third party”), so, no, that wouldn't be true even if the California Democratic Party was reliably leftist, which it decidedly is not, see, e.g., Dianne Feinstein.

> Contrast this with a partisan primary system. In that system, on the final ballot, it would be difficult for special interests to formulate an argument appealing to both candidates.

It's actually not, you just craft it around the local district not left-right ideology.

> for some reason, I am downvoted but there is little engagement or actual refutation of what I'm saying. If you're going to downvote, at least say something.

Downvoting is saying that something isn't a productive addition to the conversation, engaging is saying that even if it is wrong, it is. There's really no good reason to engage when downvoting, or vice versa, they serve opposing purposes.

You have basically said that the republicans are simply bad in the state because they “campaign like it’s Kansas,” which is ridiculous because candidates are always local. That type of dismissiveness of an entire party is exactly the issue.

> You have basically said that the republicans are simply bad in the state because they “campaign like it’s Kansas,” which is ridiculous because candidates are always local.

The state party officials (and party aligned interest groups) have a big impact on candidate grooming, funding, selection, and messaging, and the influence they exert results in campaigns that are ineffective in much of the state. And it wasn't always that way, and it didn't because of the jungle primary change (Schwarzenegger was an exception to it, but not because he was before the jungle primary, but because he came through a route entirely outside of the party system, despite being a party member; the effect had already set in, though it wasn't yet as deep as it is now.)

> That type of dismissiveness of an entire party is exactly the issue.

You are confusing cause and effect.

You are making this out to be a political argument which it is not. The point is when all levels of government align under one party, which has leaders, it becomes more like a dictatorship. I don’t care how bad you personally consider the Republican party, there are those who consider Democrats the same way. That polar mindset is the problem. It’s not as black and white as you make it out to be and many people often agree with various positions on both sides, but when one side becomes to strong you are forced to essentially agree with all positions of that dominant side.

> You are making this out to be a political argument which it is not.

No, I'm not. I'm making it out to be a factual argument about the causes of the present political situation, which it very much is.

You seem to be unable to separate evaluation of the factual causes and effects of political situation with moral evaluation of the involved actors.

> The point is when all levels of government align under one party, which has leaders, it becomes more like a dictatorship.

Not really, especially with the jungle primary system which limits the ability of party leaders to control candidate selection in districts where the other major party fails to maintain competitiveness, and especially not where the people retain the powers of initiative, referendum, and recall, and entities outside the dominant party (including, but not limited to, the second place party) are able to bring issues directly to the people through those avenues against the desires of the dominant party.

> I don’t care how bad you personally consider the Republican party, there are those who consider Democrats the same way

I have said a word (in this thread) about how bad I consider the Republican Party, only how poorly chosen their recent electoral strategy has been for the realities of the State. There's other states (and, though to a far lesser extent, other times in not-too-distant California history) where I would say the same broad kind of things (with different details about the problem) about the Democrats.

> but when one side becomes to strong you are forced to essentially agree with all positions of that dominant side.

Maybe, in some abstract sense, but not on any concrete sense that actually has any bearing on the actual situation in California.

The way you are trying to dissect bits and pieces of this and not the point itself is proof enough of your bias here. You are literally splitting sentences in half and debating them separately. Really, you are even trying to debate an undisputed point of “bad” and go on to explain how wrong that is and that it is republicans “poorly chosen..etc.” Again that partisan politics has nothing to do with the point. What are are arguing is already obvious because republicans are losing and thus yes obviously they had a bad strategy. If a football team lost a game literally everyone could say they had a bad strategy or the other team has a good. The problem and point of what we are saying is what RESULTS from that occurring not a discussion on how it occurred.

> The problem and point of what we are saying is what RESULTS from that occurring not a discussion on how it occurred.

Explanations of both the cause and the results have been offered, and I have given arguments on both of those points, which you have responded to with irrelevancies as to arguments you imagine I might want to make about how good or bad the Republicans are (and then, bizarrely, having raised that imaginary argument, complained that I reacted to it and described it as misplaced and said it was an "undisputed point" that I was "trying to debate", when literally the reverse was true: it was a point I never made that you were trying to debate.)

This is ridiculous. California's gop is broadly successful as most of the states land is republican by far. And at the state level that's what matters. Plus it's only a few years ago that california had a gop governor. You can say lots of schwarzenegger but he didn't campaign like it's Kansas.

> This means that special interests in California need only present their cause through the lens of leftism and they will automatically find sympathetic candidates in the top two, no matter who those are.

The fact that no sane Republican candidates seem to exist in California is not the fault of the jungle primaries.

The lack of sane California Republicans is the fault of a Republican primary electorate that views things like "Actually running the government" as a mortal sin.

Lets see some California Republicans replace Nunes with a Republican with a couple brain cells to rub together and then we can talk about the faults in the jungle primary system.

Until then, you may want to start looking for faults by looking in the mirror.

Don’t you have ranked or proportional voting? Even with ranked voting people could choose from different democrat legislators (a Sanders vs a Biden) but be confident republican won’t get in with a plurality.

But that's what I'm saying.. when the candidates are so similar that certain interest groups always get their way (for example biden and sanders agree on oil, unlike republicans and sanders), then certain special interests become privileged