That race is Democrat Gil Cisneros vs. Republican Young Kim and as of last night, Cisneros was down by 711 votes — a gap that has been steadily narrowing as more votes are counted as the late votes are breaking heavily for Cisneros. It’s my understanding there are still thousands of votes to count so there’s a chance we can pull this one out.
Almost all the races in California that were too close to call on election night have broken for the Dems as all the votes are counted. No wonder Republicans don’t want to count all the votes!
Harder, 32, a venture capitalist, had anchored his campaign to Denham’s vote against the Affordable Care Act, while arguing that he would push for universal health care in Congress.
Affordable health care might be popular in rural areas. Whoda thunk?
solid prediction - closely Trump aligned Republicans who lose by virtue of the Democrat gaining substantial absentee ballot support - will scream fraud
Republican who were never really Trump lovers but went with the flow - will take this opportunity to walk away with dignity -
Yup. This is my district so I’m watching things closely. All my family voted mail-in, so at least five of those are solid (D) votes, and evidence suggests there’s more where those came from - we may still pull this off yet…
California is also a great leading indicator of the long-term demographic suicide pacts in the contemporary GOP. Starting with Gov. Pete Wilson and the proto-Trumpist anti-immigrant Proposition 187 way back in 1994, they have been diligently working to whittle their electoral base down to just angry white males, and it turns out that there ain’t enough of those to win. And the CA ®s have now missed several opportunities to change strategies. I think they’re rapidly reaching the point where the damage to their brand is permanent and irreversible.
Here’s one interesting point: At several points along the GOP slide into statewide irrelevance, the next downward leg started out with what looked like a victory for the hate/fear/bigotry ticket. Prop 187 passed quite solidly, only to be overturned in the courts.
In 2008, the anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 followed nearly exactly the same script. Passed solidly, failed to pass legal muster, and now we have just (overwhelmingly) elected as our next governor the guy who famously issued same-sex marriage licenses when he was mayor of San Francisco, one of the events that fed into the Prop 8 debate.
So…
First you get what seems like a victory at the polls for the forces of hate, fear, and bigotry
Then it runs into trouble in the courts
And finally, the backlash it provokes leads to long-term changes for the better
Interesting pattern, eh?
@austin_dave The introduction of sane, nonpartisan redistricting helps, you betcha. And it’s part of the overall pattern, too.
The average age of House members must be going down by close to a decade. Nice to see new names coming in, not just from California. The real question is whether Democrats as the majority can work well together to get things done. That’s easier to do in dissent - or, apparently, if you have a madman as your leader and his antics divert attention, allowing the rest of the part to go after modeling their dream government - small, non-regulating, low-taxing and benefits-reducing, with a soupçon of prejudice to stir the mix.
