If the state of California decides to secede, what do you think of it? Do they not operate as if a sovereign nation already?

What secessionists, no matter the state (I'm a Texan, so the issue of secession is familiar), don't seem to realize is the degree to which their state relies on the federal government. For some reason they believe that the revenue provided by taxes no longer collected by the feds but by seceded state will wash the cost of defense, border enforcement, infrastructure, entitlements, administration etc. they will have to assume as a sovereign nation. They will no longer benefit from the transfer of funds from other regions of the country that are represented by federal spending. Their GDP will be affected by the exit of very large military contractors who want to both retain their US contracts and get out from under the cost of doing business in Cali to the remaining states. They will lose the secondary spending revenues represented by the net exit of federal employees, military and civilian. And they will incur the completely new expense of securing an international border magnitudes longer than the border with Mexico. And on and on and on.
Add it all up and the independent nation of California has all the potential of becoming an emerging second or third world nation.
On the negative side the US will lose the Kardashians, the Real Housewives of Orange County and the Valley.

Whoa there! Maybe this isn't such a bad idea after all.

I'm more amused by their blustering. Texas has been threatening secession for awhile now, but they've got the arms and ammunition to back it up. California just enacts gun law after gun law. If they secede, they'll just end up being an expanded territory of one of the many gangs there.

I am a firm believer in the right of a state to secede. Of course SCOTUS disagrees with me on this point (White v Texas). In looking at the Constitution there is nothing preventing secession so in keeping with the 10th amendment, they should be allowed to do so. I would hope that they did it as a referendum as opposed to the state government just doing it. They do not operate as a sovereign nation, but they do act on their own a lot and exert a great deal of influence in the Union.