Orange County

Huntington Beach is in Orange County, between Los Angeles and San Diego. It's the population center of the 48th congressional district and if you want to know how a reactionary Russian spy and psychotic bigot like Dana Rohrabacher could have been elected to Congress 15 times... just watch the video above and try to get into the heads of his people. The current congressman, freshman Harley Rouda isn't nearly as bad as Rohrabacher. He beat Rohrabacher in the anti-red wave of 2018-- 157,837 (54%) to 136,899 (46%).

Katie Porter-- a leaderThere are some good politicians trying to do a good job through this. And then there are the nightmares like Trump and the Trumpists. Like Trump, governor Asa Hutchinson (R-AR), Kristi Noem (R-SD), Kevin Stitt (R-OK) and, especially, Ron DeSantis (R-FL) make everybody else look relatively good.

The CNN.com headline yesterday, Katie Porter isn't part of 'The Squad.' But the freshman House Democrat is stirring up trouble for Trump, was... meh. True, Katie Porter isn't part of The Squad. And true, Katie is "stirring up trouble for Trump." But... there's a lot more to it. Each member of The Squad can boast a ProgressivePunch crucial vote record of "A"-- three of them, perfect 100% scores, in fact. Katie's ProgressivePunch crucial vote score isn't as robust.

Last cycle, the NRCC was so certain that they would hold CA-45 in Orange County that they didn't even bother putting incumbent Mimi Walters into their Patriot Program for vulnerable House members. That may have been a mistake. The district, which went into the race with a PVI of R+3, had given Romney a 55-43% win over Obama but gave Hillary 49% to Trump's 44%. With a $92,378 median income, it's the 13th richest congressional district in the country. Ethnically, it's 53.2% White, 22.4% Asian.

Harry Truman has a warning for today's Democratic establishment: "Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time."Yesterday was election day in a huge swathe of inland Orange County, the 3rd supervisorial district.

Still Not Working For Them“The California Republican Party isn’t salvageable at this time,” wrote former Assembly Republican leader Kristin Olsen this week.

Maybe it’s too early to congratulation progressive Democrat Katie Porter and New Dem Harley Rouda, but yesterday’s L.A. Times reported that Mimi Walters (CA-45) and Dana Rohrabacher (CA-48) are no longer seen as viable candidates by Ryan’s shady, Adelson-funded SuperPAC. Both have been cut off and left on the side of the road to die, politically speaking.

Yesterday, CNBC interviewed notorious Trump rubber stamp Mimi Walters, from Orange County, California. I mentioned her county rather than her district (CA-45) because it's an inland district and she prefers to live on the beach-- in Dana Rohrabacher's district.

Today President Obama spoke at the Anaheim Convention Center in Orange County on behalf of Southern California candidates Katie Porter, Harley Rouda, Mike Levin, Katie Hill, and Gil Cisneros (AKA- the Lottery Winner).

The more people who remember this on election day-- or understand it-- the betterNate Silver at FiveThirtyEight looks at the numbers and senses that a wave may be headed this way.