God, I've seen so many analyses of the Prop 22 defeat that want to blame it on "neoliberalism", suburbanite Democrats, liberal hypocrisy, etc. And not one that notes that the airwaves were absolutely blanketed with ads that portrayed Prop 22 as an anti-labor bill.

Am I the only progressive pundit who watches TV aimed at younger, more racially diverse demos? I saw soooo many ads that were basically, "A vote for Prop 22 will ruin the lives of drivers, who need to be able to set their own hours." It was a lie, of course, but an effective one.

A lot of people do drive Uber because other working class jobs have onerous schedules that interfere with care-giving duties. And so it was easy to scare folks with ads falsely claiming the right to set your own hours was being taken away. Miss that, and you miss everything.

If you're a bougie white guy with a career attacking other bougie white people, you might not have experience with people losing a job at the Gap because child care fell through at the last minute. But the people who ran those ads did their research.

Anyway, calling California voters elitist hypocrites assumes incorrectly that they're all wealthy white liberals. I suspect this is a situation where some highly misleading but convincing ads moved a lot of the working class vote. It's a danger with ballot initiatives.