San Diego is really, really bad news for Democrats
American Thinker | 02/13/2014 | Thomas Lifson
San Diego, the eight-largest city in America, elected a Republican as mayor by a 9% margin that surprised all the "experts," 54.5% to 45.5%. Republican city councilman Kevin Faulconer defeated Democratic Councilman David Alvarez in a city that has been trending both Democratic and Hispanic.
There are two hard lessons for the Democrats here in the election.
Lesson one, as noted by John Fund of NRO,
"..the vaunted Obama election model - flood the zone with negative attack ads and excite the base of the Democratic party - flopped. Faulconer defeated fellow City Council member David Alvarez by nine points in a city that Barack Obama carried by 63 percent to 37 percent only 15 months ago.
Democrats were stunned at the margin. In the November open primary, Democrats had won 54 percent of the ballots cast and were convinced they could win the runoff between Faulconer and Alvarez.
In the wake of Obamacare's very public and ongoing disaster, it is going to be harder for Democrats to excite their base and drive turnout. With a key mid-term election this year, that is terrible news for the Democrats. The election (and re-election) of The First Black President is no longer on the table. The best the Democrats can come up with in 2014 and 2016 is going to be demonization of the GOP, their perennial means of asking voters to ignore their own shortcomings."