Some residents of California want to secede from the U.S. following the jarring 2016 election results that gave Donald J. Trump the presidency.
As such, the awesomely titled and hashtagged #Calexit movement has been born … but does it stand even a remote chance of success?
The outlandish idea of secession doesn’t seem so crazy anymore to some Golden State residents, given who won the popular vote.
Trump won the Electoral College decisively, and thus the White House, but Hillary Clinton actually got more votes, 64,874,143-62,516,883.
In California, she won a staggering 61 percent, and her margin of 7,362,490-3,916,209 accounts for all of her national "win" and then some.
When Trump says that he didn"t compete in California and therefore the popular vote is meaningless … he"s not making a terrible point.
Both sides played by the same rules and he won (despite Jill Stein"s recount and Trump"s outrageous claim that millions voted illegally).
Still … of the Californians who voted to award their 55 Electoral Votes, nearly two out of three picked Clinton instead of our 45th President-Elect.
So yeah, there"s secession talk. But how realistic is it?
Not very. Ripe with financial, political and financial hurdles, #Calexit would first face an expensive and arduous state initiative process.
Which, even if it succeeded, would then require persuading two-thirds of Congress to relinquish the state in order to actually happen.
In short, it"s not going to.
Darry Sragow, a Democratic strategist who teaches election law at the University of Southern California, called it “an inconceivable thought.”
Even if the state voted for it, “I cannot envision a circumstance under which the rest of the country would even think about this for a nanosecond.”
Just the same, a group of grass-roots group of secessionists, calling themselves Yes California, last week proposed a 2018 ballot measure.
If the group can get the signatures and navigate the red tape, it will ask Golden State residents if California should be its own country.
For more details on how they justify such a move, beyond simple opposition to Trump, and the obstacles the movement faces, watch:
