A month before the November election, one of the top political thinkers in Maryland sat down for a lunch at a funky restaurant in Hyattsville and essentially outlined how the Democrats could lose the presidential election.
They would not lose Maryland to the Republican presidential candidate — not this year, anyway — but the future was trending strongly away from Democrats.
So when GOP nominee Donald Trump won several Rust Belt states on the way to capturing the election, it did not surprise some Democratic strategists sitting just a few miles north of the White House and Capitol.
That a state like Maryland — widely perceived, with some historical justification, as being reliably blue — is shading in parts to red should add to the concernment of Democrats already reeling from a political Pearl Harbor on Election Day.