California emerged as a cautionary tale on the first night of the Republican National Convention, as several speakers used the state to show what would become of the country if Democrats were elected to power on a radical left-wing platform.

The message seemed jarring to local, liberal California media, such as the Los Angeles Times:

But as the state battled wildfires, and suffered rolling electricity blackouts, in the midst of coronavirus shutdowns, there seemed little ground to complain.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host who was once married to California Governor Gavin Newsom, said:

If you want to see the socialist Biden/Harris future for our country, just take a look at California. It is a place of immense wealth, immeasurable innovation and immaculate environment – and the democrats turned it into a land of discarded heroin needles in parks, riots in streets and blackouts in homes.

Rebecca Friedrichs, the plaintiff in a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court case challenging the power of teachers’ unions to force their members to pay dues (a power that was overturned in 2018 in Janus v. ASCME), spoke about her personal experience:

When other dedicated teachers and I served within the unions, we spoke up in defense of children, parents, scientific fact and American values. For our trouble, we were brutalized, booed off the platform, barred from committees, shouted down, and even spit upon by union leaders.

…

To fight back on behalf of children and America, brave teachers brought a lawsuit against unions, and do you know who intervened against us? The Obama-Biden Administration and California Attorney General Kamala Harris! They argued against us at the U.S. Supreme Court. Their comrades labeled us “spawns of satan,” and slandered us in mainstream media.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) slammed Democrats for the chaos in the nation’s streets, and noted California’s mismanagement:

But instead of a comedy, it’s a horror movie. They’ll disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door. And the defunded police aren’t on their way.

It’s the only kind of movie they’re making in Hollywood nowadays – that’s if the lights even stay on in California anymore.

By the way, America shouldn’t be giving any more power to the junior senator of a state that can’t even keep its power grid running.

Natalie Harp, a beneficiary of President Donald Trump’s “Right to Try” law, which provides experimental medicines and treatments to terminally ill patients, called herself a “formerly Forgotten American from California,” noting that while Democrats “love to talk about healthcare being a human right,” that meant “a right to marijuana, opioids, and the right-to-die with “dignity”—a politically-correct way of saying ‘give up,’ at best, and at worst, assisted suicide.”

California legalized assisted suicide in 2016.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.