Good News for Conservatives from . . . California?

I t may have taken the Associated Press a little while to call California, but the outcome there was never in doubt. California is the land of Democratic excess and nutty aquarian politics, after all.

Or is it?

As of this writing, Joe Biden is on track to beat Donald Trump in California at least two-to-one, but the same electorate came down on conservatives’ side on issues ranging from rent control to racial preferences.

Uber and Lyft, joined by other gig-economy companies, went to voters to head off an effort to reclassify the independent contractors who work for them as full-time employees, proposing a compromise measure. California’s insane plan for independent contractors would have hammered the prospects of workers ranging from freelance writers to ride-share drivers, and it very likely would have meant the end of Uber and Lyft in the state. Democrats and labor unions fought Uber and Lyft as hard as they could and lost — and it wasn’t particularly close, with 58 percent voting for the measure. The new arrangement will keep ride-share drivers as independent contractors but give them wage guarantees for time spent in the car and make them eligible for health-care subsidies. Innovation and a sensible compromise carried the day.

Democrats pressed to rip open the state constitution in order to impose racial and sexual preferences on college admissions and government employment, which have been banned since a constitutional amendment passed in 1996. California said: No, thanks.

Democrats also had hoped to impose a large tax increase on non-residential real estate in California. Proposition 15 would have dissolved some of the taxpayer protections passed in 1978, subjecting commercial and industrial properties to reassessment — meaning a likely tax increase — every three years. With 72 percent of the votes counted, 51.7 percent of the electorate has rejected Democrats on that one, too: A big tax hike on businesses during a disruptive epidemic is not an obviously good idea.

In the wake of the recent protests, the Left in California pushed for a measure that would have prohibited cash bail. It likewise seems headed for defeat. At the same time, Californians extended voting rights to those on parole and rejected a measure that would have made some offenders convicted of serious crimes ineligible for early release.

Democrats pressed to extend voting rights to some 17-year-olds in California, allowing those who would be 18 before the general election to vote in primaries. California appears to have rejected this idea.

Democrats demanded broader powers to impose rent control. Voters turned them down.

The SEIU, a powerful union, tried to get voters to impose heavy regulations on kidney-dialysis centers as part of its pressure campaign to get a foothold in these businesses. It failed.

Sometimes, good policy is good politics: As much as the prospect may irritate our woke friends, government at all levels really ought to be racially neutral as a matter of law, and that stance is politically attractive. Of course it is the case that formal “colorblindness” is not a guarantee of justice or fairness, but it is still the best policy — rules and norms matter. It is also the case that affirmative-action schemes such as those entertained by California progressives systematically discriminate against Asian Americans. That is a problem in institutions around the country, not only in California. Conservatives are right to attend to it.

Extending the vote to 17-year-olds is bananas. If anything, we should be pressing in the opposite direction, given the state of the nation’s 18-year-olds. You can have a world in which students must be provided security blankets and trauma counseling whenever Ben Shapiro speaks on a college campus, or you can have a world in which we treat 18-year-olds like adults. You cannot have both. Children don’t get the vote.

Allowing for flexibility in the labor market is good for workers and for firms. Being an Uber driver in Los Angeles may not be the best job in the world, but that is not the relevant question. The question is, rather: What’s the next-best option for the people who need that income? The most likely option for gig-economy workers thrown out of work by regulation is unemployment and loss of income. Everybody is better off with options.

Rent control is a proven failure as a policy for making housing affordable. Higher real-estate taxes on commercial buildings are not likely to contribute to a lower cost of living in California, either.

Republicans are not very competitive in California. But some conservative ideas are very competitive in California. Tuesday’s election provided six or seven examples of that. Somewhere in there, there is a lesson to be learned for Republicans, if they are interested in learning it and able to.