It may be time to revisit the old axiom from Tip O’Neill, the former Democratic House speaker from Massachusetts, who famously said that all politics are local. These days, as the California recall election showed, most politics are national.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) easily avoided being recalled this past week by employing a strategy to nationalize the race, drawing energy by bashing the Republican-led states of Texas and Florida for their handling of the coronavirus pandemic, linking the GOP’s leading candidate to former president Donald Trump and in the process waking up what had been a slumbering Democratic base. …
But if most politics are national, is the California recall a harbinger of the Democrats’ strategy to avoid crippling losses in next year’s midterm elections? That’s a different question. There are some strategies that no doubt will be exported, but there are limits to what can be translated from deep-blue California to other parts of the country, or from the oddities of a recall election to a more traditional midterm campaign season. CONTINUED
Dan Balz, Washington Post
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