While the Democratic Party in America relies on millions of college-educated liberals as its base, it depends on two additional sources of political power. The loss of either one could be fatal to the party’s ability to win elections. The first is America’s financial elites, providing money and institutional support. The second is America’s low-income minority communities. Joel Kotkin, a fellow in urban studies at Chapman University in California, has termed the relationship between these two groups as the “upstairs-downstairs” coalition.

The dynamic is simple: America’s elites and the politicians they control rig the economy to deny upward mobility to low-income communities. They enact regulations that make it nearly impossible to operate a small business at the same time as they regulate major industries so heavily—housing, mining, timber, oil and gas drilling and refining, and agriculture—that the cost of living puts solvency out of reach for low-income households. They then issue government benefits to low-income households to cover their shortfall, and they do this in exchange for votes.

This system is perfected in California, a state where you may find millions of college-educated liberals, stupefying wealth, and the nation’s leading percentage of people living in poverty. In all three cases, the narrative that justifies the system is consistent: we must do whatever it takes to save the planet from the climate emergency, we must do whatever it takes to protect vulnerable groups from discrimination, and, of course, the more recent variant, we must do whatever it takes to stop President Trump and his minions from destroying democracy.

The irony would be amusing if it weren’t so destructive. If there is anywhere in the United States where democracy has been destroyed, it’s in the State of California, where the Democratic Party controls 75 percent of the seats in the State Senate, 75 percent of the seats in the State Assembly, and occupies every state-elected position, including governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, controller, treasurer, insurance commissioner, and state superintendent of public instruction. Democrats have held this so-called trifecta of state political power in California for the last 15 years.

At the same time, nine of the ten biggest cities in California have a Democrat mayor and a Democrat majority on the city council. The same applies to every major county in the state. Democrats have the state locked down. In November, California voters are likely to approve Proposition 50, a redistricting scheme that aims to increase the Democrat share of California’s congressional seats from 83 percent (43 out of 52) to 92 percent (48 out of 52). The Yes on 50 elites, led by Governor Newsom, have already raised over $90 million to wage a saturation-level ad campaign. The rhetoric is predictable and finds fertile ground in California’s thoroughly indoctrinated electorate: Stop Trump. Stop the fascists.

But to repeat a cliche that is old but often true, it is always darkest before the dawn. Millions of Californians have had it with the Democrats. They include beleaguered small business owners, the shrinking but still substantial middle class, and the leaders and workers in every industry in the state that make so much as a scratch in the ground. And now a new faction is rejecting Democrat policies: Silicon Valley.

It would be premature to claim Silicon Valley has realigned, but things are changing fast. Even before Trump’s 2024 victory, several Silicon Valley tycoons decided they’d rather help define and empower the MAGA movement than support the woke alternative. They include billionaires Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Joe Lonsdale, David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, and, of course, Elon Musk.

Since the election, the Valley’s momentum away from Democrats has continued. Tech billionaire Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle and Trump supporter, now has a controlling interest in CBS. As part of the deal, Ellison hired Bari Weiss as the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. Weiss, who co-founded The Free Press after leaving the New York Times in disgust at their censorship of right-of-center voices, may not completely fix CBS’s biased reporting. But CBS staffers are not happy with the decision, which may be an indication of changes to come.

Ellison isn’t done. He is poised to acquire a major stake in the restructured TikTok and is making moves on CNN. These developments promise to put a dent in the media bias in favor of the Democratic Party that could surpass the impact of Musk’s Twitter acquisition in February 2022.

There’s another defector from the Democrats who threatens their hegemony over Silicon Valley, and that’s Mark Benioff, founder of Salesforce. In a recent New York Times article, Benioff was described as a “benevolent, big-hearted billionaire,” of whom, reports the Times, “the benevolence remains, but the liberal leanings do not.” Benioff is now on record as avidly supporting President Trump and even recommending the deployment of National Guard troops to San Francisco. The Times goes on to note that Apple CEO Tim Cook and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have recently praised the president.

The defection of Mark Benioff represents a seismic shift in the political landscape of Silicon Valley. This is not someone whose liberal bona fides can be easily distorted or disparaged. This is a man who has gifted over a billion dollars to charities, focusing on homeless, healthcare, and environmental causes. That someone of his standing among liberal Democrats has unequivocally embraced President Trump is an astonishing development.

While Benioff’s defection may reflect a new and welcome way for results-oriented liberals to shed their old beliefs in favor of new ways to govern civil society, there are pragmatic considerations that are also driving the defections. In particular, the recognition by the burgeoning purveyors of AI and builders of server farms that Democrat policies, and California policies in particular, have created an energy shortage.

The frustration these Democrat-leaning, energy-hungry tech moguls are feeling is exemplified by the recent bestseller “Abundance,” published earlier this year by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. The authors, both Democrats, have produced a comprehensive and scathing review of everything wrong with Democratic policies. They condemn what they describe as a culture of process over production and call for massive deregulation. The authors ultimately fail in their choice of solutions because, not surprisingly, they continue to adhere to Democratic pieties: single-family homes are unsustainable sprawl, oil and gas are an existential threat to the planet, and big water supply projects leave an unacceptable environmental footprint. But Klein and Thompson are right about the regulations that are strangling the development of energy in California.

It is reasonable to assume that California’s tech titans are going to embrace the first half of the message in the book, Abundance, backing politicians who will, at last, begin to dismantle California’s overbuilt regulatory apparatus. It is also reasonable to assume that if they can’t get enough power to run their server farms using “renewable” energy, they’ll turn to whatever the next best sources are: nuclear and ultra-clean, ultra-efficient natural gas.

Without a monolithic Silicon Valley supporting Democrats, the overall structure that gives them dominance in California could collapse. If a few dozen Silicon Valley billionaires decide that Republicans, including the president, have better political solutions than Democrats, they have enough money to stand up to any other special interest in the state, including the all-powerful public sector unions that are almost 100 percent committed to Democrats. These defecting billionaires will offer overwhelming financial resources to candidates who are committed to changing California’s legislative priorities on everything—energy, water, housing, crime, homelessness, and education—and they will buy the media companies that deliver the narrative and shape public sentiments.

The up-down coalition that Democrats rely on to give them a majority in America and a supermajority in California is fraying. The low-income and minority voters who have traditionally bought what Democrats are selling are losing patience as prices continue to rise, rates of crime and homelessness remain too high, and the public schools continue to fail their children. But now the elites on top are changing the message. New voices and new ideas are getting traction.

Republicans who have written off California may want to have another look. Silicon Valley has delivered wondrous technological changes. Now Silicon Valley may do the same with politics, shattering the up-down coalition, exposing its cynical essence, and holding it accountable at last.