The California Difference

I haven't seen much comment on what follows.

Clinton won the popular vote in the United States by about 3 million. She carried California by about 4.3 million and beat Trump 2 to 1. She lost the other 49 states by about a million. 

What made California different? 

Is some ways it wasn't different. There were other states in which Clinton ran strongly. 

It wasn't the lack of third parties, which picked up about 6% of the California vote. In what might be the country's most progressive state, the Jill Stein voters and Libertarian voters didn't change the outcome. 

I don't know why Clinton took 61.5% of the vote, although that is about what you would get if you added 95% of the Democrats to 90% of  the independents. But how did the Democrats get so many independents to support a candidate with high negatives? 

My guess is that independents, about 30% of the voters, remain independent because they care more about the issues that affect them than about political parties. They vote for the candidates who support single payer health care, for example. If no candidate supports single payer, they vote for the one who backs the Affordable Care Act.

In California independents (who register as decline to state) are allowed to vote in the Democratic primaries, which tends to create a natural alliance. Maybe the national Democrats should try to earn the votes of independents who like Bernie instead of trying to exclude them or blaming them for Trump's victory,  But it's hard to learn something new.