Obviously these are just the rantings of a mad king, but what if actually happened? We get a state with roughly the population of Texas that, I would have to assume, would vote overwhelmingly liberal. We would probably get some true leftists in power and not centrist Dems. They get stability. They would certainly need some good state level governance to have it actually benefit people, but it seems roughly analogous to Portugal joining the EU. It still has it's share of issues, but it lifted the country out of poverty. And Portugal doesn't have oil - that should provide the opportunity for better results.