California earthquake.(Scan)

The resounding victory of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the equally breathtaking defeat of Governor Davis and the Democratic Party, mark a potential turning point, not only for California but also for urbanized, coastal America. In one evening, a seemingly unalterable trend toward ever-greater regulation, higher taxes, and social engineering within the Gore zone of"blue states" has not only been challenged but rejected.

The election also holds a great lesson on political trends along America's highly urbanized coastal regions. In California, what Howard Dean would call "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" got its rear-end kicked. Nearly two thirds of Californians, including a large contingent of Democrats (and the bulk of independents) voted for either Schwarzenegger or state Senator Thomas McClintock, his more conservative competitor.

Of course, not all Democrats deserted their party. In the parallel universe also known as San Francisco, the recall was defeated by four to one, and Lieutenant Governor Bustamante won a resounding victory. The Bay Area counties remain the last holdouts for left-wing orthodoxy.

But everywhere else, the tide was with the Republicans. In Los Angeles County, the largest urban jurisdiction in the nation, the recall vote was split down the middle, and Schwarzenegger beat Bustamante 45 percent to 37 percent. With McClintock's vote added, Republicans got 56 percent, a remarkable number in what was considered a bedrock "blue" county.

Democrats have not suffered so complete a defeat in the Golden State since the days of Ronald Reagan. Much of the supposed base of the party, like trade unionists and Latinos, voted against the party's choices. The issues that killed the Democrats were varied: ultra-liberal social legislation, particularly drivers licenses for illegal aliens, the tripling of the car tax, and a regulatory environment that threatened to chase away the state's entrepreneurial class.

A former Democratic speaker of the Assembly, Robert Hertzberg, believes that the gerrymandered, increasingly leftist majority in the legislature simply had no idea that what they were doing was unpopular. "These people are not listening," Hertzberg suggested. "They are paying all their attention to the people who are writing them checks and giving them awards. The ...