What states secession movements are all about, and the impact they will have and one benefit of the movements.

Did someone's favorite candidate lose a recent election and they can't accept the result of the election? The trend now if you lose an election it seems is to propose secession. That seems to be the strategy of conservatives in parts of some states, usually if not entirely where Democrats are elected to state wide office.

The secession movement is really an attack on Democracy. Frequently a winning candidate in an election will carry some parts of the election district and not others. The solution isn't to divide up the election district, whether it is a nation, state, country or a municipality, on some pretext or another. The idea of secession is an attempt to nullify the results of an election whether in 1860 or today.

The California movement to divide the state into six states has no chance of actually resulting in six states since congress would have to admit them. However, California is foolish enough to have adopted the referendum method of enacting laws and a secession measure might be on the ballot if it gets enough signatures. It will need about 8% of the population. Instead of electing a representative and holding that person accountable for their actions if you live in California you have dozens of proposals for laws on the ballot and no one is really accountable for them.

This secession movement in California will have one result though. It will discredit individuals, political factions, movements, who are seen in support of breaking up California and who there after will be perceived as anti-Californian. If the secession measure gets on the ballot politicians, organizations, and opinion leaders will have to make public stands on this. There could be some severe internal conflicts in the conservative movement in California.

Most importantly if the ballot measure becomes even somewhat close in opinion polling or at the polls secession movements in the United States will suddenly go from being objects of amusement or curiosities to being threatening. Secessionism will be perceived with greater hostility. The Confederacy will be seen more negatively as well as organizations which celebrate it. Monuments to those who sought to break up the United States by violent means will seem less tolerable.

So I think that the progress of the secession proposal in California will be great in terms of defeating the neo-Confederate movement.

Also, it will afford an opportunity to raise issues about the celebration of the Confederacy in California. Perhaps the California state government shouldn't celebrate secession if it doesn't want secession.

What will likely happen is that the measure will fail to get anywhere near the 800,000 signatures required and even if it did get on the ballot do very poorly and secession will be again amusing as the pre-occupation of cranks.

Perhaps if Obama could denounce secession it might get enough signatures through the reflexive response (knee jerk reaction) of a certain fraction of conservatives to get on the ballot. The Democrats might make statements to get a reaction from some conservatives to sign the petition to get the measure on the ballot to cause trouble for the Republicans. Suddenly Republicans would be identified with secession.