In an indication of what's going on in the California suburbs, a craft beer pub owner in the offramp town of Covina used his truck to block a health inspector, bringing himself a visit from the local cops.

According to a report by radio host Todd Starnes:

The owner of Bread & Barley in Covina, California decided enough was enough when a public health Nazi ordered his restaurant to shut down.

So Carlos Roman parked his truck behind the vehicle belonging to the public health inspector.

“He wants to come in here and say nobody can work—well, then he can’t work either!” Roman told a police officer who responded to the scene. “If we can’t work, he can’t work.”

As many as a half dozen police officers showed up and demanded the restaurant owner move the truck.

“This is what happens when people get desperate,” Mr. Roman said. “I’m desperate. Who’s going to pay her car payment? Who’s going to pay my cook’s rent?”

He then asked the police officer and the health department Nazi whether they got a paycheck on Friday.

Before we go on, first, I have to say I don't agree with Starnes's characterization of the officials here as 'Nazis.' Listen to the video, it's very clear they are not.

But it's also clear that the owner's pain was real, he was a man living off GoFundMe donations, in desperation making a Quixotic protest. There was no way that pub owner, Carlos Roman, was going to win this encounter, and the cops gave him time and time again to just move his truck, they didn't even threaten him with a ticket, they just warned him he either needed to do that or he was going to get a tow. 

This encounter was one of many small rebellions from small shop owners, seen in Texas, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and elsewhere in Southern California. It's not guns-and-God territory either, the stuff of Democrat disdain and legend. Bread & Barley is a small upscale brew pub in a fairly wealthy suburb 22 miles outside Los Angeles.

In other words, this happened in a very blue California suburb, run for years by Democrats, not the Texas badlands. That's a little unusual.

The town of Covina, population 47,000, is just outside Los Angeles, abutted by West Covina, San Dimas, Walnut, and Irwindale, home of the Sriracha hot sauce factory. It's also majority-Latino, mostly Mexican-American.  Its congressional representative, Rep. Grace Napolitano, a member of the House's progressive and Hispanic caucuses, is 84 years old and been in office 22 years. And in Covina's surrounding areas, such as Hacienda Heights, Walnut, Fullerton, Yorba Linda, and La Habra, congressional seats were "unexpectedly" won back from the ballot harvestors of 2018, this time for the Republicans.  

According to Wikipedia, Young Kim defeated Gil Cisneros in District 39, Michelle Park Steel defeated Harley Rouda in District 48

Which suggests quite a bit of rebellion from that suburb region over the COVID restrictions, many of them quite unreasonable, and all of them disproportionately placed on small business owners, while big businesses profit. 

This calls to mind an important essay written by Ed Morrissey on Hot Air yesterday, on how Democrats' California setbacks in election 2020 portend big trouble for Democrats across the country. 

 The New York Times warns Democrats today that their losses in several House races in California last month could mean that they have lost their momentum in the suburbs, where they took back control of the lower chamber in 2018. The NYT’s Adam Nagourney chalks that up in part to Republican “false or exaggerated” attacks on socialism and defunding the police, but concedes that Democrats’ messaging played right into those attacks:

 Morrissey goes on to list several air-tight reasons the Democrats are about to face an avalanche of disaster in 2022 mainly because of their alienation of these suburbs -- places like Covina for sure. He argues that Democrats embraced their lunatic-left socialism and defunding of the police, and they didn't need Republicans to pin it on them, they did it themselves. He also says that Democrats refused to canvass, due to COVID restrictions which was maybe another factor. The bigger one, though, was that Democrats saw huge turnout which normally benefits them, not Republicans, but this time it did benefit Republicans. Moreover, come 2022, there probably won't be Trump to motivate Democrats to turn out. All of that spells disaster. These points are well explained out here.

It's also worth noting that these California suburbs are signficantly, often majority, Latino, the group Democrats have hinged their fortunes on through identity politics, imagining that all the average Latino wants is illegal immigration. For Latino business owners and employees, that isn't a winner. Notice the Covina pub owner's name, Carlos Roman, and notice the choice of items to order on his upscale pub's menu.

Roman undoubtedly lost his Quixotic battle to block the health inspector's truck, but in those suburbs he represents, he's likely to win a war. 

Democrats are on thin ice with encounters like these in Latino suburbs in solid blue redoubts spontaneously rising up. These events for Democrats portend disaster.

Image credit: Screen shot from Todd Starnes, Facebook Watch // shareable video.