Analysis of: Is boring back? The California governor’s race and the fight for the future of the Democratic party
The Guardian | May 23, 2026
TL;DR
California's chaotic Democratic primary reveals a party unable to articulate a vision beyond opposing Trump, as billionaire and establishment candidates fight while workers struggle with unaffordable housing. The real contest isn't between candidates—it's between capital's competing factions while working-class interests remain unrepresented.
Analytical Focus:Class Analysis Contradictions Historical Context
The California governor's race exposes fundamental contradictions within the Democratic Party's coalition and reveals the structural limitations of electoral politics under capitalism. Despite representing the 'resistance' to Trump, California Democrats find themselves unable to articulate what they actually stand for, precisely because doing so would require confronting the class interests they ultimately serve. The field's fragmentation—featuring a billionaire progressive, career politicians, and tech-backed centrists—illustrates how different fractions of capital compete for control of state apparatus while working-class concerns about housing affordability and economic survival remain peripheral. The race's material context is essential: California's housing crisis, stagnant wages relative to cost of living, and devastating wildfires represent the contradictions of a state that has embraced both progressive rhetoric and Silicon Valley capitalism. When Ruby Ortega, a veteran healthcare aide, describes being unable to afford rent and gas, she articulates the lived reality obscured by debates over 'credentials versus gimmicks.' The California Labor Federation's unusual multi-candidate endorsement suggests even organized labor cannot identify a clear champion for working-class interests among the available options. Most revealing is the ideological confusion captured in one observer's 'fever dream': socialists endorsing a billionaire while MAGA supports an immigrant. This apparent paradox dissolves when we recognize that electoral coalitions in capitalist democracies are not primarily about ideology but about which faction of capital can best manage social contradictions. Tom Steyer's progressive platform, funded by $190 million of personal wealth, represents an attempt to stabilize capitalism through modest redistribution—not to transcend it. The race demonstrates that in the absence of independent working-class political organization, electoral contests become competitions between different managerial approaches to the same fundamental system.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Billionaire investor class (Tom Steyer, Rick Caruso, Sergey Brin), Career political establishment (Becerra, Villaraigosa, various congresspeople), Organized labor (California Labor Federation, union workers), Working-class voters struggling with affordability (Ruby Ortega), Tech capital (Silicon Valley interests backing Mahan), Professional-managerial class (party strategists, consultants)
Beneficiaries: Whichever capital fraction gains state control, Political consultant class regardless of outcome, Media industry through advertising spending, Donor class maintaining access to power
Harmed Parties: Working-class Californians facing housing crisis, Those affected by wildfires and climate disasters, Workers whose material concerns remain peripheral to campaign discourse, Communities lacking independent political representation
The race illustrates capital's dominance over electoral politics even in a 'progressive' state. Steyer's $190 million personal spending demonstrates how wealth translates directly into political viability, while Becerra's establishment credentials represent accumulated political capital from decades of serving within existing power structures. Organized labor, despite its endorsement power, can only choose among candidates already vetted by capital—hence the unusual multi-candidate endorsement reflecting their limited leverage. Working-class voters like Ruby Ortega remain objects rather than subjects of political contestation, their struggles invoked rhetorically but not structurally addressed.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: California's housing affordability crisis driving political discontent, Wealth inequality described as 'astounding' by labor leader, Cost of living outpacing wages for working-class residents, Climate disasters (wildfires) creating economic instability, California's position as world's fourth-largest economy
California's economy combines advanced tech sector (Silicon Valley) with entertainment industry (Hollywood) and significant service, agricultural, and care work sectors. The state's progressive image masks deep class divisions: tremendous wealth concentration among tech billionaires and investors coexists with widespread precarity among service workers, healthcare aides, and others in reproductive labor. The candidates represent different approaches to managing these relations—Steyer promising wealth taxation, Mahan offering tech-friendly 'fixes,' Becerra representing traditional Democratic governance—but none propose fundamental transformation of production relations.
Resources at Stake: Control over California's $4+ trillion economy, State regulatory power over tech and real estate capital, Housing policy and land use decisions, Climate and energy policy affecting major industries, Federal-state relations and resistance capacity
Historical Context
Precedents: Gray Davis's 1998 'boring' victory suggesting voter pragmatism, Schwarzenegger's celebrity governorship representing entertainment capital, Recall elections and voter frustration with Democratic governance, Progressive Era reforms creating California's top-two primary system, 2016 and 2024 elections where 'qualifications' discourse failed Democrats
This race reflects the neoliberal Democratic Party's ongoing crisis: having abandoned class-based politics for professional-managerial technocracy, the party struggles to mobilize voters or articulate positive vision. The comparison to 1998's Gray Davis campaign is instructive—Davis's 'boring' competence represented pre-2008 neoliberal stability, but that model collapsed with the financial crisis. Today's candidates offer variations on crisis management rather than transformation. The party's definition of itself 'almost entirely on what it is against' reveals how neoliberalism hollowed out social-democratic content, leaving only opposition to the Right as organizing principle. This represents a late-stage symptom of the broader crisis of bourgeois democracy under conditions of intensifying inequality.
Contradictions
Primary: The fundamental contradiction is between the Democratic Party's need to mobilize working-class voters through progressive rhetoric and its structural commitment to managing capitalism on behalf of various capital factions. This manifests in the race as the inability to consolidate around any candidate precisely because no candidate can reconcile workers' material needs with donors' class interests.
Secondary: Steyer's position as billionaire 'progressive' who claims he 'can't be bought'—his wealth itself represents the system's inequality, Labor federation endorsing multiple candidates, revealing organized labor's subordination to Democratic Party rather than independent class politics, California as 'resistance' leader while failing to address affordability crisis for its own residents, Progressive taxation rhetoric from candidates dependent on wealthy donors and self-funding, Anti-establishment sentiment being channeled into electoral politics rather than independent organization
These contradictions are unlikely to resolve through this election cycle. The most probable outcome is continued management of crisis rather than resolution—whichever Democrat prevails will face the same structural constraints. The deeper resolution would require independent working-class political organization outside the two-party framework, but current conditions of labor weakness and ideological disorganization make this distant. Short-term, expect continued voter cynicism and potential Republican gains if Democrats cannot deliver material improvements.
Global Interconnections
California's gubernatorial race reflects broader crises of liberal democracy under late capitalism. The inability of a wealthy, nominally progressive state to provide affordable housing and economic security mirrors failures across the Global North, where decades of neoliberal governance have concentrated wealth while degrading public services. The race's dynamics—billionaire self-funders, fragmented coalitions, voter cynicism—replicate patterns seen in elections from France to Brazil, suggesting systemic rather than local causes. The federal context intensifies these dynamics: Trump's second administration creates both threat and excuse for California Democrats. Resistance to federal overreach becomes substitute for positive agenda, while the threat of Republican governance disciplines progressive demands. This mirrors how peripheral countries' politics are constrained by imperial core dynamics—California's 'sovereignty' is limited by federal power just as national sovereignty is limited by global capital. The state's significance as potential model ('so the rest of the nation can see that it's possible') raises stakes but also exposes limits: if even wealthy California cannot demonstrate alternative governance, what hope for less-resourced states?
Conclusion
The California governor's race demonstrates that electoral politics within bourgeois democracy offers limited terrain for advancing working-class interests. The genuine economic suffering of workers like Ruby Ortega—unable to afford rent, struggling with gas prices—remains peripheral to a contest dominated by competing capital factions and their political representatives. For those committed to fundamental change, the lesson is not to abstain from electoral engagement but to recognize its limitations: building independent working-class organization, strengthening unions beyond their current subordination to the Democratic Party, and developing political education that clarifies class interests are necessary preconditions for transforming elections from spectacles of capital's internal competition into genuine contests over social direction. The 'California dream' isn't broken—it's functioning exactly as designed for those it was meant to serve.
Suggested Reading
- Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg (1900) Luxemburg's analysis of how reforms within capitalism cannot resolve systemic contradictions directly illuminates why California's 'progressive' governance fails to address fundamental inequality.
- Prison Notebooks (Selections) by Antonio Gramsci (1935) Gramsci's concept of hegemony explains how the Democratic Party maintains working-class support while serving capital—the 'common sense' that there is no alternative to choosing between establishment candidates.
- The State and Revolution by V.I. Lenin (1917) Lenin's analysis of the capitalist state as instrument of class rule clarifies why control of California's governorship cannot fundamentally transform class relations, only manage them differently.