If you are wondering how it is that Jeff Gorell (R CAND, California-26) is managing to put Julia Brownley in such electoral fear – in California, forsooth! – well, it’s because Brownley is an awful candidate, of course. And she has awful friends, too. Let’s go to the Twitter, shall we?

First off, meet some of Jeff’s supporters.

Perfectly nice, right? Six women, campaigning for the Republican candidate in CA-26. Problem is, that candidate is doing well. Really well. Too well, which is why this winner chimed in:

That’s put in as a screenshot because the odds of said tweet surviving any length of time is… iffy. You see, one of the women involved Tweeted back at RL Miller:

@RL_Miller @DavidOAtkins @JeffGorell I find it funny that u think both Janet Dorsey and I are white! — Andrea Duarte (@Poochi19) August 22, 2014

The Gorell campaign also forwarded this statement from another of the women in the photograph:

“I’m Latina. I’m dismayed that, today, someone could be ignorant enough to make assumptions about my heritage and my culture because of the color of my skin.” Chantelle Limon

All in all, I’m told by those who are in the know that there are two Latinas and one African-American woman in that picture, which almost certainly explains why the attack squads are out on this one. Especially considering that R.L. Miller is herself a local (and white!) Democratic official (VP of the Democratic Club of the Conejo Valley*) and member of the Establishment in good standing**. But isn’t that just the way it goes? You get people who challenge the existing narrative pushed out by the sclerotic dinosaurs at the top of the power structure, and then – sure as sunrise! – one of those dinosaurs descends down to put that person back in her Democratic party-assigned place.

But that’s par for the course. If the Democrats had any real grassroots people in their activist class, instead of the Establishment apparatchiks, rent-seekers, and would-be political officers that make up what we will charitably call their ‘backbone’ …well. I might have never left the Democratic party in the first place, honestly.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Confirmation of that here. I would be mildly surprised that the woman is hesitant to use anything except her initials, except of course that I know that the progressives that she panders to online are much more likely to take someone seriously if they thought that she was actually a male. Well, that and the fact that her radicalism might raise awkward questions in her actual line of work, even in California…

**She’s a member of the Central Committee for the Ventura County Democratic party. You may remember that county party: it’s the one whose chair is notorious ageist David Atkins. Brownley ended up having to try to distance herself from Atkins; I wonder whether she will end up doing the same with the more conventionally prejudiced RL Miller?