When is a fire an earthquake?

The fire now engulfing whole neighborhoods in Los Angeles will soon engulf the politicians who failed to protect them. The first casualties will be Mayor Karen Bass and California governor Gavin Newsom. They are already “dead politicians walking.”

It is important to recognize that Newsom and Bass are not being held responsible for a “natural disaster,” even one of horrific scale. Nor should they be. They should be held responsible for failed leadership, for misplaced priorities, for the misuse of high tax revenues (no one can say Californians are undertaxed), and for policy choices that failed to meet the first responsibility of any government: protecting citizens’ lives and property.

Responsibility for those failures is bound to spread well beyond Bass and Newsom. Public understanding will come from investigations by public commissions and journalists — and denunciations by opposing politicians. They will highlight deadly errors of omission and commission by elected officials and bureaucrats, as well as problematic zoning rules. The public will demand answers, and they will be demand changes.

As well they should. The policy failures are massive and catastrophic — visible in the destroyed neighborhoods. They are illustrated by two small examples. One is the sad symbol of fire hydrants without water. It’s true that even properly working hydrants could not have quenched the conflagration. The fires were too big. But useless water pipes and empty fire hoses illustrate the city and state’s failure to prepare for disaster. A second symbol is the special session of the state legislature, now meeting in Sacramento. As the Santa Ana winds began to blow, Governor Newsom’s priority was to recall the legislature to “Trump proof” his state against the incoming administration.

The dry water hydrants and misplaced legislative priorities point to a much larger problem: progressive politicians who are so busy signaling their virtue, so busy advancing identity politics and “green agendas” that they fail to meet their basic responsibilities.

Take identity politics. Leaders of LA’s fire department are on tape, very recently, proudly declaring their top priority was to make their department more “diverse.” Not more competent or effective; more diverse. That focus, which pervades California politics, is one reason the LA. fire department is not led by experienced fire fighters but by executives who rose through the ranks of emergency medical technicians. They worked on ambulances, not fire trucks.

As for the green agenda, it is responsible for dumping billions of gallons of desperately-needed fresh water into the Pacific each week instead of sending it to Southern California. The goal was to protect a small fish — a worthy goal but at what cost? An extremely high cost, as it turned out. Much-needed reservoirs were never built in the Southland or filled for emergency needs.

Equally important but far less well-known is the impact of “green policies” on dangerous, above-ground power lines. Many are antiquated fire hazards. Their malfunctions and sparks start forest fires, but the state had priorities far more pressing (to Democratic Party leaders) than upgrading those lines. They forced the state’s largest electric utility, PG&E, to divert its resources into building solar- and wind-power instead of upgrading its transmission lines.

The irony is that the forest fires, which emit vast quantities of CO2 and other pollutants, have negated decades of air-quality improvements under clean-energy programs.

Californians voted for these politicians and these policies. Now, the pols and the voters face a reckoning. What they voted in, they can vote out. They hesitated to do that as more and more Californians left the state. The state symbol became a U-Haul truck. Voters accepted policies that shuttered small businesses, unable to pay the $20 minimum wage, and encouraged bigger ones, like Tesla and SpaceX, to leave the state to escape the high costs and regulatory nightmares. Now, the Californians who want to rebuild will find that they, too, face those regulations.

The state’s once-beautiful communities will eventually rise from the ashes. Bass and Newsom won’t be so fortunate. The governor, long considered a top prospect for the presidency, can begin planning for some other career. Mayor Bass can forget about rising to the governor’s mansion. Those two bunglers will have enough trouble hanging onto their current jobs.

The identity politics and virtue signaling both have trumpeted for years are long past their sell-by dates, soured by the high costs they impose. The fires made those costs visible.

The questions now are?

• How soon will California voters recall their failed leaders? And
• How far will the damage spread to other progressive politicians, who have long dominated the state’s politics?

National Democrats are also worried about the spreading damage. They don’t have a leader or national spokesman today and won’t have one until they choose a presidential nominee in 2028. Although Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries can lead the party on Capitol Hill, neither is well-positioned to lead it nationally. Even on Capitol Hill they and their party face hard choices. Will they stick will with their current progressive agenda, trying to block every Trump move, or will they edge back to the middle, what Bill Clinton called “triangulation”?

What Democrats cannot allow to take hold is the image of a party that destroyed the beautiful state of California and let Los Angeles burn beyond recognition. That image would be fatal. No voters would return that party to power.