Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg recently watched a series of focus groups of white working class voters in rural Wisconsin, the Mahoning Valley region in Ohio, northern Maine and suburban Macomb County, Michigan, all swing areas where Trump did well. Vote-rich Macomb County, for example, gave Trump a 53.6-42.1% victory over Hillary in 2016, after going for Obama both times he ran.
Last week one of the famous electoral prognosticators, who never gets anything right until a day or two before the election, looked at the Senate election in Montana and pontificated that "Based on what we can piece together, the race seems like it’s neck and neck at the moment. But does that actually make it a Toss-up?
The U.S. has made another blunder in the Middle East which will impact us for years to come. Will it lead to a much wider war? That’s hard to say, though speaking as a historian of the Middle East and an analyst of its politics, I would say it is not especially likely. But it will have severe consequences, and it will cost us in blood and treasure.
A couple of weeks ago, we met Liam O'Mara, through my own lens. Now lets revisit him through his own. "I am running as a progressive populist in a red district in California," he began.
CA-42 is one of the last remaining red districts in California. The district voted against Obama both times he ran and last year gave Trump a 53.4-41.4% win over Hillary. The district, entirely in western Riverside County has an R+9 PVI. The main population centers are Corona, Norco, Eastvale, Menifee and Murrieta. A weird crooked Republican, Ken Calvert, has been in office there since 1992.
When Ken Calvert was first elected to Congress in 1992, CA-42, the western Riverside County district, was in the heart of a deep red swathe of Republican California. Today, Calvert is surrounded by Democrats. To the east is CA-36, the Palms Springs district, today Raul Ruiz's D+2 seat. To the north, he's bordered by Mark Takano's CA-41 (D+12) and Norma Torres' CA-35 (D+19). To the west are 3 districts that just flipped from red to blue last year-- CA-39 (Gil Cisneros), CA-45 (Katie Porter) and CA-49 (Mike Levin).
Indio, a small city of 85,000 in Riverside County's Coachella Valley, is 127 miles from L.A. and 98 miles from Mexicali. Somewhat over two-thirds of the population is Hispanic. Riverside County, along with San Bernardino County, part of the "Inland Empire," is a big meth-manufacturing and distribution center. We can smell it when you drive around some towns.
