If Democrat Conor Lamb beats Republican Rick Saccone in the Pennsylvania vacant House seat special election, or even comes very close to doing do, you can take it to the bank that the Democrats and their media lapdogs will be trumpeting that it was a referendum on Trump, who carried the district by 20 points in the Presidential race, and that it surely portends a blue wave that will sweep Democrats into control of the House and maybe even the Senate this fall.

Sorry to throw a bucket or two of ice water on the drunken Dems and Trump haters, but let's take a more sober look at what really happened. Allow me to throw a few buckets of sobering ice water on the drunken Dems and Trump-haters:

While it is true that the special election may have had some elements of Trump backlash, the reason it is a wake-up call for Republicans more than anything else was that it underscored the pitfalls of typical lack of incumbent party enthusiasm in off year elections, particularly so when running a candidate that generated very little enthusiasm to begin with. Other than that, it also proved that even Trump may be hard pressed to drag an old nag over a the finish line ahead of a young throroughbred.

Here is what really happened: We had a very effective anti-Democrat candidate straight out of central casting who beat a maudlin Republican who was unable to generate enthusiasm or a seat that was vacant because of a sex scandal on the part of the previous Republican occupant in a district that had more registered Democrats than Republicans..

The reason Trump won by 19 points in the Presidential race can be summed up in two words: Hillary Clinton. The reason the seat had been in the hands of a Republican for the past 15 years was because the Democratic Party had moved too far to the left of the working class residents of the district. But Conor Lamb was not from today's progressive Democrat camp. Just the opposite. Though he is a young, fresh and decidedly good looking face, the ex-marine and former prosecutor Lamb was also a throwback to the time when there were an appreciable number of moderate Democrats.

Conor Lamb is an avowedly anti-Pelosi, anti-liberal, pro-gun, pro-life moderate who made it clear that he was NOT running against the President and that he did not feel that the election was in any way about Donald Trump. And he strongly courted the large union presence in the district, promising to stand up for them and to protect their retirement programs and other benefits. He was, in other words, their kind of Democrat in a district that wanted to vote Democrat but had not been given any good reasons to do so until now.

But Conor Lamb is not the national Democrat Party's kind of Democrat, and therein lies the reason for the Democrat's nightmare: How many other Conor Lamb's are out there for the 2018 mid-terms in a party whose bosses and candidates are moving ever further to the left? The answer at this time is precious few. Unless Lamb's performance provides a wakeup call for the Democrats on which direction the party needs to turn and the kind of candidates it needs to compete and win in marginal races, the Dems and their media buddies may be in for yet another post-election hangover in November, just like happened in November 2016.

My two cents.