George, David Sischo/Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources

A Hawaiian snail died yesterday, and s/he made the news. Snails are hermaphroditic, but George didn’t self reproduce. S/he achieved a sort of immortality as the last surviving Hawaiian land snail, leaving no descendants. S/he was a handsome snail, but reclusive, and died in captivity.

Species eradication is a problem for Hawaii. Snails are vulnerable, but according to a list by the Hawaii Biological Survey, they’re not alone. There are hundreds of endangered species on the islands, and they range from mammals, the Hawaiian monk seal and the Hawaiian hoary bat, to plants, to George. George used to be on the list anyway. Now George is on the extinct list.

Island plants and animals are particularly susceptible to eradication by invasive species. They haven’t developed defenses, and the invasive species don’t have natural predators. Threatened snails in Hawaii (which includes an entire genus of which George was one species) are the prey of the rosy wolfsnail, an invasive predator imported to control pests on sugar plantations. The wolfsnail didn’t help with the pests.

I understand that there are now biological checks on incoming flights. Barn door, shut.

Meanwhile Republicans are also endangered in Hawaii. Before World War II, Hawaii was Republican. It was an invasive species imported by New England missionaries, and you may recall that New England was Republican then too. Remember that great line in White Christmas about the sparsity of Democrats n Vermont? It sounds dated now, like a line about the sparsity of Republicans in Texas.

The flip from Republican to Democratic dominance occurred in the 50s when the Democratic Party put together a coalition of Asian voters and labor. Hawaii was already an Asian plurality state and they were apparently ignored by the Republicans, and it remains the most unionized state in the nation. According to the Harvard Political Review, the strength of unionism dates to violent strikes against Big Sugar in the 30s and 40s. There’s a theme here, along with Florida and Louisiana and the rosy wolfsnail Whenever you see the words “big” and “sugar,” it ain’t gonna be sweet. It’s almost like Big Sugar can’t help playing the role of evil cattle baron in a John Wayne Western.

There are no Hawaiian Republicans in the United States Senate or Congress, and statewide elections run about 80% Democratic. There is a Hawaiian Republican Party website, which promises “To Make Hawaii Great Again.” That’s the problem with Hawaiian Republican politics: those Republicans who remain in the party are true believers. Only the pure bother to survive, kind of like being a Democrat in Oklahoma. In 2017 the rising Republican star and minority Hawaii House floor leader, Beth Fukumoto, resigned from the party because of a kerfuffle over marching in a women’s rights parade in Honolulu. There were only five other Republican members of the state house, so her resignation probably didn’t leave much of a leadership gap, but it was a classic conflict between the Tea Party wing and the moderate wing of the Republican Party. The moderate wing left. All one of them.

But meantime a similar split affects Hawaiian Democrats. You may recall that after President Obama was born in Kenya, he was born again in Hawaii, and Hawaii voted 71 percent for Obama in the 2012 election. Support for Hillary dropped to 63 percent in 2016, but then she wasn’t a native son, and it was still Hillary’s highest vote percentage of any state. But here’s what’s really interesting: in the Democratic primary, 72 percent of the state voted for Bernie Sanders. Support for Sanders was so strong that after the national election one Hawaiian electoral college voter couldn’t resist casting a protest vote for Sanders, even though the vote was required to go to Clinton. The Force is strong in this one.

The tension between progressive and moderate Democrats is a mirror image for the tension between Tea Party and moderate Republicans, and there seems to be no place where the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is as strong as in Hawaii. If Congresswoman Alexandria Casio-Cortez is now the poster child for progressive Democrats, it could have as easily been Hawaiian congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. In the 2012 Democratic primary, the senior Senator from Hawaii, Brian Schatz, defeated his more moderate opponent by 1,732 votes by campaigning on issues related to global warming. He has apparently moved Hawaiian Democratic candidates to the left on global warming policy and healthcare and higher education accessibility.

Meanwhile I didn’t really know Daniel Inouye’s story, other than as commodified by James Michener. I recommend it.

Postscript:

There was an article last week in Governing magazine that made me realize that the Democratic monolith in Hawaii wasn’t an anomaly. Of the state legislatures, only one, Minnesota, is split between parties. Republicans control 31 states, Democrats 18. Most states aren’t competitive. As a general rule, if rural areas control the legislatures (as in Wisconsin), the legislature is controlled by Republicans. Urban areas are Democratic. “The Republican Party has moved from the country club to the country, while the Democratic base has moved from the union hall to the faculty lounge. Democrats are far more likely to represent districts with a strong minority presence, while Republican areas continue to get older and whiter. ” I guess it’s almost a joke, but there you are.