Congratulations to the president on a bona fide achievement, somehow being upside down as leader of the Democratic Party in the biggest blue state in the union.

And special congratulations to the vice president, who’s somehow under 40 percent in her home state.

Trump got 34 percent of the vote in California in 2020. Kamala Harris is now apparently only a few points more popular than he is.

The only silver lining for Dems in this dark, dark cloud is that Harris’s polling here may help solve their 2024 dilemma for them. So long as her numbers aren’t disastrous, the party will probably have no choice but to nominate her if Biden decides not to run again. They simply can’t risk alienating black and women voters by shoving aside the first black woman VP when it’s “her turn” to run, even though she’s all but guaranteed to lose.

But if her numbers are disastrous then the case that she’s unelectable begins to become unanswerable even among those who’d otherwise shout “racism” or “sexism” if she were passed over. And polling 38 percent in California as the highest-ranking California politician in America certainly qualifies as disastrous.

So maybe Pete Buttigieg is the one I should be congratulating.

There is a lot of happy-talk optimism from Democrats about how 2022 might go.

But step back and think about the fact that Biden's approval rating *in California* is underwater right now, per new Berkeley IGS poll.

Now: 47-48%
July '21: 59-37%
April '21: 62-34% pic.twitter.com/tnKpMYERym

— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) February 16, 2022

Dianne Feinstein is down to 30/49 in the same poll. She was unpopular even at the start of 2021, being viewed as too old and too centrist by California lefties. But she’s slipped even further since thanks to the Biden/Harris anchor around her ankles. More from the LA Times:

Amid the broadly pessimistic mood of Californian voters, two-thirds of whom believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, the lagging approval for Democrats Feinstein and Harris stands out, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the IGS poll.

“I was amazed at the disaffection for both of the women,” DiCamillo said…

“I’ve never seen those constituencies moving to the negative side in unison as we’re seeing now,” said DiCamillo, who has conducted polls at UC Berkeley and, before that, the statewide Field Poll, on Feinstein’s popularity since she joined the Senate…

Voters in the state also remain glum about the country’s future. Less than a quarter of registered voters believe the U.S. is on the right path, while 67% say it is headed in the wrong direction. The negative assessment holds across all party affiliations, geographical regions and racial groups.

Some of the explanations here are obvious. In a state with one of the highest costs of living in the continental U.S., inflation is bound to hit especially hard. And Californians are as fatigued with the pandemic’s persistence as everyone else is, I’m sure. Maybe more so, since they’re way more likely to be subjected to state and local mandates than, say, the average Floridian is.

They were promised normalcy, as we all were. They didn’t get it. They’re pissed.

But given the earthquake in San Francisco politics last night, one can’t help wondering if the GOP’s message on schools is also gaining traction even in Team Blue’s largest stronghold. California’s not about to turn red, of course, but if even San Francisco liberals are clamoring to throw the bums out over virtual learning and prioritizing “equity” over merit in admissions, swing districts nationally could be poised to cascade into the GOP’s column. A few choice tweets:

"It breaks my heart that kids in our public school system still have to wear masks," San Francisco mayor @LondonBreed told me today.

We discussed public safety, working from home, homelessness, fentanyl and much else.

Full interview coming shortly.

— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) February 16, 2022

No one watches Fox News here. There’s no real right wing influence. The leaders of the recall are nonwhite immigrants. The media will lie nonstop about this but the fact that an overwhelming majority of Democrats recalled San Francisco’s ultra woke school board speaks volumes.

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) February 16, 2022

lol https://t.co/0bNewKbP4R pic.twitter.com/artvkbnxJw

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) February 16, 2022

Amy Walter made a shrewd point about how Biden’s failures are exacerbating public impatience with wokery: “The thing about politics is that most voters just want their gov’t to work for them. If the basics are going well, they’re more willing to accept change/transformation. When things aren’t going well, they aren’t. Timing matters. Competence matters.” If prices and COVID case counts were on their way down, Biden might be back in the high 50s in California and the San Francisco school board recall might have been a tight race. But with prices rising and the pandemic grinding on, even liberal parents are apt to run out of patience with school closures, mask mandates, and assorted progressive nonsense that’s making a difficult period in people’s lives even more needlessly difficult.

Which helps explain the rash of Democratic governors suddenly dropping mandates. With Biden and the party powerless to solve the major problems bedeviling Americans, they’re scrambling to at least try to get right on the cultural disputes contributing to their unpopularity. No more “defund the police,” no more mandates, no more open borders. Maybe they’ll be a little more daring if COVID and inflation begin to ease this summer, but the polling in California is an air-raid siren that they need to do something different where they’re able. Now.