The argument that people seem to be sticking mostly with is that any tax on a billionaire is a slippery slope to tax regular folk. Despite abundantly clear how narrow the measure is, people have been sweating up and down that the billionaire tax is "how they'll get you"

Behind that is a "it's not good enough so don't even bother", but that works be inconsistent with prop 42.

The ads were nonstop and only showed the anti-wealth tax side. And there were 3 ballot initiatives that would poison any individual attempt to levy a new tax. They pulled out all the stops and there were at least 4 high profile billionaires behind it who don't normally put themselves in the spotlight. Two Google founders and the money behind the investors behind andreessen horowitz.

And there were a few likely involved but not named like Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook. The anti taxers also had the close connections with business leaders to create unusual endorsements like the Planned Parenthood partner and some Democrats. Gavin Newsome, the governor of the state and big figure in the liberal opposition to Trump, was very vocal.

The good news: this is the same state that was swindled out of gay marriage by a very duplicitous campaign and a few years later reversed hard with a constitutional right-to-marry legislation. California will be talking about this and ready when it comes up again.

I have an entire grocery bag of political mailers we I received this year, and almost half of that bag is "No on 40" flyers. My phone was getting 5 to 10 call per night with half those being No on 40, and I stopped even counting the text messages.

Gavin Fucking Newsom worked overtime with his billionaire buddies to make sure the billionaire tax was dead. I don't understand how people bought into the propaganda, but there are a lot of things people fall for that I will never be able to understand.

I suspect the high turnout in this blue wave election was mostly from former Trump voters turning out to punish Trump and his party. They voted Dem up and down the ballot, but when their actual beliefs are on the ballot (taxation, trans rights) they still vote according to their right-wing beliefs.