Orange County Goes Blue

My congresswoman, Mimi Walters, was ahead on election night, but the late ballot counting saw her slip behind and she's toast.

The Democrats swept all the so-called toss-up congressional districts in the county, plus a couple of other races that pundits had been watching. Republicans haven't been relevant in California for a long time, and while Arnold Schwarzenegger was Republican, he wasn't conservative. It's a blue, far-left California nowadays and I don't know what it going to take to swing it back the other way.

At LAT, "Orange County goes blue, as Democrats complete historic sweep of its seven congressional seats."

And, "Going, going ... with midterm wipeout, California Republican Party drifts closer to irrelevance":

For a party in free fall the last two decades, California Republicans learned that it's possible to plunge even further. https://t.co/kvKH2tl3nl

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) November 18, 2018

For a party in free fall the last two decades, California Republicans learned that it's possible to plunge even further.

The GOP not only lost every statewide office in the midterm election — again, in blowout fashion — but Democrats reestablished their supermajority in Sacramento, allowing them to legislate however they see fit.

After major defeats in Orange County and the Central Valley, two longtime strongholds, Republicans will have a significantly smaller footprint on Capitol Hill. (Democrats hold both Senate seats.) The GOP won’t even have enough lawmakers in California’s 53-member House delegation to field a nine-person softball team.

“It’s dead,” Mike Madrid, a former political director of the California Republican Party, said of the state GOP. “It exists in small regional pockets, where there are enough white, non-college-educated working-class communities for there to be a Republican Party. But that’s not much.”

Other states tilt lopsidedly in favor of one party or the other. But never before has a state with California’s huge populace and enormous import — socially, culturally, economically — been so dominated by a single political party. The implications will take years to fully comprehend.

Jim Brulte, chairman of the California GOP, professed not to worry. He said the party has legislative leaders “whose job it is to give voice to Republicans in the state capital.” Also, he went on, substantial numbers in the U.S. House and Senate, where the GOP holds the majority, will speak for Republicans in Washington as well.

The leader of House Republicans, Kevin McCarthy, hails from Bakersfield and enjoys a strong relationship with President Trump, which should help the state in its dealings with the administration. (If, as expected, San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi is elected speaker, she would also be well positioned to protect California’s interests.)

Still, many observers — not all of them dispirited Republicans — expressed concern about the effects of such thorough Democratic domination, both in terms of policy and, more broadly, faith in the state’s political system...

Yeah, "faith" in the system, of which there's none if you're conservative.

But keep reading.