The demographics, and the demographic future here are firm, there will never be a return to even the moderate side of the GOP.
For better or for worse, California will be the liberal experience writ large, not Detroit, or New York, but a massive, giant state, with a well known sunny, outdoorsy, and largely Republican history, and with what was thought of as an impossibility of ever failing or becoming grey and thread bare.
California is doomed to become a state where the entire coast is a gorgeous, healthy, surfing, California version of Manhattan, and the rest of the state is “the help” and the unionized government employees that make up the small middle class, live as the giant, taken for granted that they were eternal and growing, middle class of the past used to live.
There is no way out of this prediction, the demographic voting data shows that.
You can write the spiral of the situation. First, cities and counties will default and go to bankruptcy situations. They believe they can cut pensions and pay this way. Friendly judges for the unions will say no...forcing the counties and cities massive services. Local citizens react to this like the Greeks currently do....suing to have the services restored. Judges will again find a way to order the services restored. No one will be able to grasp a way to survive.
Companies and better-off citizens will then start to leave the state. Lesser tax revenue occurs. Again, judges order status quo to continue but they can’t really explain how you can pay with nothing.
Acceleration of those leaving occurs at this point. The folks in DC will be worried over this and try to dictate national policy toward California, but again face judges who won’t allow that to happen.
It’s a lose-lose-lose scenario.