It takes a lot to ruin a state as lovely as California, and just as much to ruin the state’s largest city, Los Angeles. But left-wing Democrats have been up to that important task, backed by voters who have willingly endorsed their own downfall.

Those voters and their contemporaries in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, and Boston are like the fraternity pledges who bend over for a spanking during “initiation week.” The voters, like the fraternity pledges, have consistently responded: “Yes, sir! May I have another?” It hasn’t been hard to find left-wing candidates, many of them openly socialist, who are more than willing to administer the punishment.

What about citizens who are tired of being whacked? They have voted with their feet – and their pocketbooks. They have left those cities and states in droves. They are tired of homeless druggies in the parks, fed up with police and courts that refuse to punish criminals, and sick of costly schools that deliver lousy results and serve mainly as cash cows for public-sector unions.

Those problems and more are painfully obvious across “blue” cities and states. They are certainly visible in California and its largest city. Those problems were the central question for voters yesterday’s primaries. Did they want to do anything about these failing public policies?