The press has made a big deal about an argumentative leftist from San Francisco walking up to Ted Cruz and trying to browbeat him about the migrant surge in a Los Angeles airport line.  Oh, great — just what someone in an airport line can use.  And being in an airport line, Cruz could hardly walk away from her, so the up-close and quite possibly bad-breathed tirade went on and on. 

Here's the YouTube video from the pest, which was posted by the San Francisco Examiner:

All of the press coverage focused on the airport line grandstander, identified as San Francisco supervisor Hillary Ronen, and her self-set narrative.  Ronen even seems to have set it up, too: notice that the film comes from her, and the filming didn't start midway into the encounter — it was filmed from the very start — so it appears the whole thing was planned.  Next up, the press was happy to play along to the narrative like her fiddlers.  You can read it here, here, here, and here.

Here's the real story: 

It's California.  And in deep blue unchangeable California — with Los Angeles and San Francisco as its twin epicenters — there were people standing in line to shake Ted Cruz's hand.

That's news.

Sure, about half, statistically speaking, may have been returning to other places.  But those other places could have easily been other parts of California, as Ronen was, so the odds are, it was more than half the people there who were from California.  There they were, lining up to shake the cordial Ted Cruz's hand as he stood in an airport line, breaking the unspoken taboo known in Los Angeles that you don't pester stars when you see them. 

Bottom line: Even in deep blue California, people were lining up to shake Ted Cruz's hand.

It signals something pretty good going on if even Californians (there had to be some) wanted to break their own taboos and backslap with Ted when they saw him.  Cruz himself, through his wife, has strong California ties, so it would be interesting to ask Cruz if he noticed any difference in this sort of reception.

Here's the other thing: did you notice how reasoned and rational and well prepared Cruz was to that harping woman?  Look how cool he was in the face of an obvious provocation.  He was probably tired from his trip, and he still keep his steady stamina and cool.  Ronen was the melodrama queen, clutching her throat and repeating herself as if she were the sort of person who knew nobody ever listened to her.  Cruz carefully brought up facts — from the fact that migrant cages were established by President Obama to the hard reality that smugglers and Democrats are encouraging the migrant surge and the bad conditions in the underfunded, over-peopled detention centers.  Cruz pointed out that a third of the migrants rolling in with kids on their hips weren't even their family members, meaning a bad child-smuggling racket was taking hold as the surgers rolled in.  These hard facts, and others, were conveyed to the obviously unhinged woman haranguing Cruz in the airport line trying to make a name for herself.  Cruz must have known he was on film, too, and knew that plenty of people viewing the encounter were going to notice who the rational one was.

Oh, and since I know the Mission District that Ronen represents quite well, since I used to live there, I can throw in that she represents a rat-, roach-, and rodent-filled district, brimming with illegals, MS-13 gangs, muzzle flashes, drunks, and the occasional dead body.  It's definitely a place run by Democrats in a one-party city.  Maybe she should clean that place up before she goes criticizing Cruz.

Advantage: Cruz.

Image credit: San Francisco Examiner, via shareable YouTube screen shot