CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATIC VOTERS SPOIL A PERFECTLY GOOD NARRATIVE

Oops -- this wasn't supposed to happen:

Democrats were on track to avoid getting locked out of the general election in a number of key, battleground House districts as the vote count from California's top-two primary continued early Wednesday.

The party has scrambled to avoid being shut out of the general election in three Southern California districts where large numbers of Democratic candidates split the party's votes. Under the state’s “jungle” primary system, that would have allowed two Republicans to advance to the November general election for seats Hillary Clinton carried in 2016.

With the votes still being tallied early Wednesday, Democratic candidates were in second place in those three districts....

If the current vote totals hold, Democrats would avoid their most feared scenario.

This was such a great "Democrats in disarray" narrative, and Democratic voters spoiled it. It could have worked on so many levels: All those "resistance" voters were so eager to destroy President Trump and the GOP that too many of them ran for office and they split the vote, because progressives are naive and impractical -- or they anticipated a "blue wave" that failed to materialize, while underestimating the number of True Patriot Republicans just the way they did nationally in 2016. Even the jungle primary idea plays into a "What will those screwy liberals in California think of next?" narrative -- never mind the fact that the 2010 ballot proposal that resulted in the jungle primary system was initiated by Republicans, including Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But Democratic voters grasped the system and avoided the pitfalls. They'll have a candidate in every key race. That shouldn't have happened! They're Democrats! They're supposed to squander every opportunity!

Republicans also got their wish -- a gubernatorial candidate in the general election -- which tells me that they understand the system, too. I know that the jungle primary is widely despised, but maybe it's not that hard to figure out, especially when voters are engaged (which is how it should be in a democracy, right?).

****

I'm not going to do a thorough analysis of yesterday's results across the country, but I'll note this:

[Alabama] GOP Rep. Martha Roby ... failed to win renomination in her primary Tuesday when she fell below 50 percent of the vote. She will face former Rep. Bobby Bright, an ex-Democrat, in a head-to-head race for the Republican nomination in July.

Roby spurned Trump in 2016, promising not to vote for him and calling for him to quit the presidential race after the Access Hollywood tape — which featured Trump bragging about how he could grope women with impunity — surfaced in the final weeks of the campaign.

Roby’s rejection of the president hurt, siphoning votes to a write-in candidate in the 2016 general election and drawing four Republican opponents into this year's primary. She had 38 percent of the vote with more than three-quarters of precincts reporting, while Bright, a former mayor of Montgomery, had 28 percent.

“Martha Roby committed political suicide the day she said Donald Trump wasn’t qualified for political office,” said David Ferguson, a Republican strategist.

Roby rejected Trump in 2016, but do you know how often she's voted with him since then? 97.4% of the time. Really, folks? You're still holding a grudge against this woman for a possibletiny fraction of extra loyalty? You Republicans really know how to nurse a grievance.