Commentary A few years ago, a friend passed along a warning from his mother, an attorney in the Bay Area who was worried about the upcoming election. Although a political liberal, she didn’t fear the Republicans, of course (not in San Francisco), only the candidates from the far left who were up for local offices such as district attorney. “Soros is behind it all,” she told her son, and the candidates she had in mind came right out of the radical ranks. It was the first I’d heard of Soros money reaching so far down to local levels. I took it as but one more episode in a long history of conservative dismay—not because it seemed that the tremulous fingers of Mr. Soros reached into everything, but because Republicans had nothing to block them. No point getting indignant over the machinations of left, I thought, not after so many years …