California 50th District Recap

As I said before, the 50th district special election was not a test for the Republican Party but it is also good that the Republican candidate won the election. Brian Bilbray's return to congress (he previously served from his election in 1994 until he was defeated in 2000) means that the Democrats are going to have to fight one more Republican incumbent in order to win the election this year. Brian Bilbray won only 49.5 percent of the vote, despite the fact that the Democrats failed to except marginally improve on Kerry's 2004 total in the district, indicating that they have not made the inroads into the Bush districts they are going to have to make in order to win the election.

At the same time, the fact that the independent who ran opposing immigration and amnesty won more than three percent of the vote indicates that the right may now not be as cohesive as the left, and that a right-wing equivalent of Ralph Nader in 2008 might be a spoiler if the circumstances are right. This is no sign that Republicans can sit on their hands and expect victory to come in the November elections, but it does mean that the Democrats still have a lot of work to do for them to be able to contemplate winning the elections for the House this year.