In the final days of the presidential election, President-elect Donald Trump never missed a chance to tie his opponent to California. It was a critique that required no elaboration—though true to form, Trump didn't shy away from providing an overheated one. At his Madison Square Garden rally in October, he proclaimed that Vice President Kamala Harris was a "radical-left lunatic" who "destroyed California."
Breathless rhetoric notwithstanding, it is a problem for national Democratic ambitions that California—the state most associated with the party's rule—is now synonymous with the top issue of the election: the rising cost of living.
