National Democrats want to make this election about the past, but elections are almost always a referendum on the present, that is unless the candidates on hand have gone out of their way to make themselves truly unacceptable. This election is a vivid reminder that who the candidates are still matters, at least when they are as clearly flawed as some of the Republicans running this year.

I’ve previously posted on my research showing a very high correlation between the results in Washington State’s “top two” primary and the results in the general election. The system makes the “primary” more like the first round of the general election in a traditional runoff election system. Washington has a history of very high primary turnout–this year it was 40.63 percent–and because of the previous use of the “blanket primary,” voting for members of both parties in the primary was common. Assuming this correlation holds up this year, my analysis points to an extremely bad November for Democrats.