Dem voters may not be ready for that much of a leftward lurch, but Pubs had better do a self-inventory

It's true that the special election in Ohio and the various primaries that took place yesterday took a bit of wind out of the sails of this narrative that Dems are set to go all Sanders Cortez:

Missouri primary

Democratic establishment candidate Rep. Lacy Clay easily defeated the Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez endorsed nurse and activist Cori Bush for Missouri’s 1st district.

Michigan primary

In the Democratic primary for governor, former state senator Gretchen Whitmer easily defeated Abdul El-Sayed , a former Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion executive director, and entrepreneur Shri Thanedar.
Abdul El-Sayed was seen as the progressive alternative to the more mainstream Whitmer. Ocasio-Cortez endorsed El-Sayed to perpetuate the left-wing takeover of the Democratic Party.
Ocasio-endorsed Fayrouz Saad also lost to Hillary Clinton-endorsed Haley Stevens in Michigan’s 11th district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Saad would have been the first Muslim woman elected to Congress if she had won the nomination and the general election.
In the GOP race for governor, Trump-endorsed Attorney General Bill Schuette easily defeated numerous candidates, including Dr. Jim Hines, president of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, and Lt. Gov. Brian Calley.
In the GOP Senate primary, Trump also endorsed veteran John James, who won the Republican nomination and will  challenge Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow in the midterms.

Kansas primary

The Ocasio-Sanders socialist movement had only one possible victory in a U.S. House district in Kansas.
Brent Welder was endorsed by both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez for the nomination against Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder in Kansas’ 3rd district, and he appeared to be heading toward victory on Tuesday.
In the gubernatorial race, Laura Kelly easily won the Democratic nomination while Trump-endorsed Kris Kobach was narrowly ahead of incumbent Jeff Colyer on the Republican side.

Washington primary

Sarah Smith hoped to defeat 11-term incumbent Adam Smith, who is far more conservative than the Socialist Democrat, but that hope was easily crushed in Washington’s 9th district.

‘Blue wave’ crash in Ohio special election

Democrats also lost the pivotal special election in Ohio considered a bellwether for the “blue wave.” This was the last special election contest before the midterms and was being touted by Democrats as a disaster for Republicans because the president won the state by 11 percentage points in 2016.

But the razor-thin election ended up in a toss-up with Republican Troy Balderson ahead. He is likely to keep the victory barring any drastic errors in the count with provisional ballots. 

However, Jim Geraghty at NRO cautions against reading this aggregate of results too over-confidently:

The morning brings news that Republican Troy Balderson edged out Democrat Danny O’Connor in the special election in Ohio’s 12th congressional district. President Trump immediately boasted that he turned around the race.

This is whistling past the graveyard. Ohio’s 12th, which includes communities north and east of Columbus, has been a traditionally heavily Republican district; Trump won it by eleven in 2016, and previous incumbent Pat Tiberi usually won by a two-to-one margin. Balderson and O’Connor will meet in a rematch in November.

You’re going to hear a lot of breathless analysis of this special House election, but the basic outlines of November haven’t changed much since what we saw in Virginia and New Jersey last November. The Democratic base is roused. They will come out to vote. A side effect of that “own the libs!” “Democratic tears are delicious!” antagonism is that it does the job of Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts for them. Maybe it’s worth it.

Look at it this way. In 2016, 112,638 turned out in this district to vote for the Democratic congressional candidate, Ed Albertson. Yesterday, 99,820 voted for Democrat O’Connor. Democrats got roughly nine out of every ten Democratic-leaning presidential-election-year voters to come out for a mid-August special election!

By comparison, a whopping 251,266 voted for Tiberi in 2016, and just 101,574 voted for Balderson last night — meaning about four out of every ten GOP-leaning presidential-election-year voters came out for the special election. Balderson hung on just because of the district’s demographics.

Right now, you’d have to conclude that the Democratic base just wants it more than the Republican one. If that pattern keeps up, forget it. There will be no drama on Election Night 2018. It’s just a question of the size of the new Democratic House majority.

This isn’t the result of some great new micro-targeting gizmo, or a jarring advertising campaign, even a particularly great crop of Democratic candidates. This is primarily driven by a Republican president who is in the headlines every single day and who finds some new way to jab and poke at voters who didn’t vote for him in 2016 and voters who have spent his presidency convinced he is Beelzebub.

There’s a great irony to this: Remember when conservatives thought Trump might be eager to work with Democrats on an infrastructure bill, imposing tariffs, raising the debt ceiling, and other areas where they thought his agenda might overlap with the Democrats? Maybe some working-class whites are drifting over to the GOP, but a lot of suburban women are heading to the Democrats. Chuck Schumer boasted at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia in 2016 that his party would come out the winner in that trade, but it didn’t work out the way he expected. But maybe those Trump voters aren’t so motivated if he isn’t on the ballot. 

Pubs need to knock off the tribalism - specifically, the Trump cult-of-personality cheerleading - and get back to principles and ideas. The cultists don't seem to be concerned about the fact that a whole lotta post-Americans can't stand the Very Stable Genius, but dismissing them isn't gonna get it come November.