On Tuesday night, I went to bed cheering the Wisconsin results but wondering if “ballot harvesting” would erase Mike Garcia’s lead in California.
On Wednesday, we got the good news that the lead was just too bit to steal.
Mike Garcia beat Christy Smith by double digits. In other words, a conservative GOP Hispanic candidate beat a very liberal Democrat in a district that went for Hillary by seven points in 2016.
So do we say hello to the red wave of 2020? I don’t think so, but we do say be careful about buying into the anti-Trump wave of 2020.
In Wisconsin and California, the elections happened in the background of two media narratives:
First, Republicans are running away from President Trump because he is going down.
Both of these candidates attached themselves to the president and they did well.
Second, more people want to stay home rather than open the economy.
Well, the lockdown is clearly getting people angry. People want safety but they want to go to back to work. These elections show that people feel fully capable of doing both.
My point is that something is happening out there between New York and Los Angeles that these polls are not picking up. The country is angry and getting angrier with politicians who don’t understand, for example, that Detroit is different than the rest of Michigan.
So what happened on Tuesday? I won’t say that a red wave is coming, but I know that a blue wave is not happening for sure.
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