What Blue Wave?

It took a while, but the votes are in from California, and the other seven states that held primaries this past Tuesday. And when the dust settled, something interesting happened.

Nothing.

That’s right. The “Big Blue Wave” that Democrats had predicted never really materialized. Oh, they were worried in California that Democrats wouldn’t get on the November ticket because of their “jungle primary”, where everybody runs and the top two are the candidates in November. They were afraid because there were “so many Democrats” running that the Republicans would take the top two spots. That really didn’t happen. In fact, what did happen was in all but one of the 53 races, the incumbents, when there was one, ended up winning the primary. In that primary, a Dem ended up finishing a close second to a Republican challenger.

In the race for Governor of California, Gavin Newsom and Republican John Cox will square off in November…seen as a major win for the GOP, who were afraid they’d get shut out of the general election. In other states’ elections, pretty much everyone that was supposed to win, did win.

The end result? No big “blue wave”. In fact, if the Democrats were hoping for anything more than a spot on the ballot in California, they should be sorely disappointed. They were supposed to be “really energized” against Trump and the GOP this primary, but in every single instance, they failed to take over the number of votes the GOP got in all of the elections where the GOP held the seat. And the GOP basically failed to unseat the incumbent except for one district in California.

What’s that really mean? Well, unless the Dems do a MUCH better job come November, they really aren’t going to take over the House or the Senate. They’ll basically do well to pick up five or six seats in the House, and not lose ground in the Senate, where they have ten vulnerable seats up for re-election.

In the end, it doesn’t look as if most places are going to change that much. In some states with Democrat Senators, like Missouri, Ohio, and Florida are just the top three that could flip. Add to that Joe Tester’s seat in Montana, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, Joe Manchin in West Virginia, and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, and you’ve gone from a 51-47-2 split in the Senate to the GOP going to 58 seats. That still wouldn’t be enough to get to the magic number of 60, but it’s ever closer, and 60 is the magic number because it can shut down debate and basically reach cloture on anything they want.

That’s saying by the way that the GOP loses to incumbents in Pennsylvania and Indiana, where Bob Casey and Joe Donnelly respectively could very well lose. If that were to happen, the GOP would basically control Congress by not allowing anything to get through even if the Democrats took over the House (including impeachment!).

Overall, there isn’t a “big blue wave” as the mainstream media would like you to believe. It’s a ripple, if anything. Just wait…but remember, you heard it here first.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!