A Barometer Of The Status Quo

In 2000 Al Gore and Ralph Nader combined to take 46% of the vote in California’s heavily Republican 50th congressional district. In 2004 John Kerry polled 44% there. Two months ago the Donk candidate to succeed the incarcerated Randy “Duke” Cunningham, Francine Busby, scored 45%. The question about yesterday’s special election was whether Busby could break through that ceiling and actually win this seat, a prospect that the Extreme Media was orgasmically already assuming as a pre-emptive harbinger of a Democrat landslide in November.

With the unstoppable Busby juggernaut poised to steamroll the hapless ‘Pubbie Brian Bilbray, with House Dems in D.C. already polishing up their gavels and calling each other “Mr./Madame Chairman, with untruth, injustice, and the Soviet Socialist way about to be vindicated once more, a cataclysmic event took place that nobody on the Left anticipated: the voters actually voted. And the result was…

…Bilbray 49%, Busby 45%.

That WHOOOSH you just heard was the name “Francine Busby” disappearing down the lib memory black hole to join decency, patriotism, integrity, sanity, and the other items the Democrat Party has abandoned.

Now it is true that the margin was a lot closer than one would ordinarily have expected for a district where registered Republicans outnumber their Dem counterparts by a 3-2 margin. Ditto coming after Busby was caught on tape urging illegal aliens to vote. But recall as well that Bilbray was the Gerald Ford of this race, being the Republican candidate running in the wake of the corrupt downfall of a fellow Pachyderm that gave his party “brand” a black eye. He also was hurt by the Libertarian and center-right “independent” (who ran on his Minuteman affiliation) who combined to siphon 6% of the vote right out of Bilbray’s pocket.

So how much of a barometer was this race really? Who knows? But to the extent that it is indicative of what is to come, it would seem that 2006 will be a wash, with GOP majorities unchanged.

In ordinary circumstances I’d have said that’ll drive Democrats insane, but they went off their collective nut five and a half years ago. What’s beyond insane? Insaner? Possessed?

Certainly detached from reality. Here’s another sample:

No matter what the media says, no Democrat should be mistaken about this result. First, this is a huge, seismic shift in our favor that bodes extremely well for November. If we receive an 18% shift nationwide, we will win the House easily. [emphasis added]

And if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon. If the Democrats received an 18% shift nationwide, there would hardly be any Republicans left in office. But of course there won’t be any such shift, which Chris Bowers knows, or he wouldn’t be engaging in such flights of wishful whimsy. I could see some grounds for it if his candidate had actually, you know, won, but just like last summer’s special House election on Ohio, in another solidly GOP district maximally contested by a heavily financed Democrat who also narrowly lost, Dems are trying to make hay out of a near miss, like a baseball team that racks up a dozen hits but only scores a couple of runs and loses 3-2. Perhaps Bilbray’s margin of victory is relevant to the re-match in November, but not to the other 434 races across the country. Or, as Tip O’Neill used to say, “all politics is local,” at least until someone like Newt Gingrich nationalizes it. And there’s no lefty “Contract with America,” or lib Mr. Newt, on the horizon.

As Jim Geraghty summed it up today, “Bilbray didn't cover the spread. Big deal.”

Double-H captured the lessons to be taken away from this contest:

Border security trumped "culture of corruption," and my guess is that… the GOP base may not be happy, but they are smart and know the effects of a Democratic majority on the war on terror and the economy, and thus keep turning up. The incredible levels of venom on the left are also very off-putting to average voters, and the inability of the Democratic leadership to separate itself from the virulent strain of net-roots have become a real handicap.

A factor that has all but removed GOP Senator Conrad Burns from the “endangered” category as well.

Imagine how bad things would be for the Dems if the GOP were as effective a foe as they are to themselves.

Might even be enough to offset that eighteen-point shift.

UPDATE: Jay Cost has a whole lot more.