Posted on 06/20/2017 11:53:25 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Democrats need to outperform Hillary Clinton to take back the House. Ossoff did worse than her.
Democrats faced yet another disappointment in Tuesday’s special elections, as Jon Ossoff, their candidate in the runoff for Georgia’s 6th congressional district, fell short and Republican Karen Handel came out on top.
Meanwhile, in the much lower-profile race for another open House seat in South Carolina’s 5th district, Democrat Archie Parnell came far closer to winning than expected in a heavily Republican territory. In the end, he lost to GOP nominee Ralph Norman.
The results make Democrats 0-for-4 in the House districts vacated by Republican members of Congress who have joined the Trump administration.
But it’s the Ossoff defeat that’s particularly painful for the party. Though former Rep. Tom Price (R) repeatedly cruised to victory in this district, Donald Trump only topped Hillary Clinton in it by 1.5 percentage points. This meant that, on the presidential level, the district was by far the most favorable to Democrats of those four open seats.
Democrats hoped that five months of a chaotic Trump administration would galvanize their voters to turn out, and send a message to Republicans in Congress that they should abandon the president or risk losing their jobs. And the liberal grassroots spent accordingly, showering Ossoff with money.
In the end, though, Republican outside groups spent millions too, and the GOP effectively turned out their own voters in what turned out to be the most expensive House of Representatives race ever.
The 2018 midterms are still over 16 months away, and a great deal in politics obviously can and will change before then. But Ossoff’s defeat suggests that, if the whole House of Representatives was up for election today, Democrats would likely fall short of retaking it. Here are three things to take away from the results.
1) To retake the House, Democrats need to do better than Clinton did against Trump. Ossoff didn’t.
Democrats have found comfort in several of their losses in open seat House elections this year, because the candidates they’ve put up came far closer to winning than Hillary Clinton did in those districts. Here are the comparisons (the 2016 numbers used were tallied by Stephen Wolf at Daily Kos Elections): •In Kansas’s 4th district, which Trump won by 27.2 points, the Republican candidate won by just 6.8 points. •In Montana, which Trump won by 20.6 points, the Republican candidate for the district that encompasses the whole state won by just 6.1 points. •Now, in South Carolina’s 5th district, which Trump won by 18.5 points, it appears the Republican candidate won by a little over 3 points.
All of this seems very encouraging indeed for Democrats.
But then there’s the Ossoff race.
Donald Trump won Georgia’s 6th district by 1.5 points. And though the votes aren’t all counted yet, the Upshot’s projections as of Tuesday evening suggest Karen Handel will outperform Trump, winning the district by about 4 points.
That’s a big problem for the Democratic Party. This race was indisputably the highest-profile contest, and therefore perhaps the most like what we’d expect the 2018 midterms to be — Republicans weren’t caught sleeping, like they were in a few of these other races.
Furthermore — and crucially — Donald Trump won the median House district by about 3.5 points.
That means that if Republican candidates in high-profile contested races slightly outperform Trump or even slightly underperform him, the GOP will keep the House. Handel’s victory shows that, at this point, that’s still a definite possibility.
2) It doesn’t look like there’s a furious national backlash over the Republican health care bill — not yet, at least
The American Health Care Act polls horrifically. In the House’s first attempt at passing it, back in March, moderates shied away from the bill at the last moment.
Then, when the GOP regrouped and passed an amended version through the House in May, Democrats responded with a song they hoped would foreshadow the 2018 midterms: “Na na na na, na na na na, hey, hey, hey, goo-oodbye.”
And yet health care never dominated the Ossoff-Handel race. While Ossoff did criticize the GOP bill from time to time, he overall preferred a message emphasizing his credentials on cutting spending.
Handel, meanwhile, claimed in an interview with Breitbart News that the GOP health bill “hasn’t been that much of an issue on the ground.”
Perhaps the affluent sixth district of Georgia was never the most likely place to rebel against Republican plans to slash Medicaid. And this doesn’t preclude a backlash against the bill should it actually be signed into law and start affecting Americans’ lives. But at the moment, “hey hey hey, goodbye” certainly seems premature.
3) Democrats haven’t found a winning formula
Over the ensuing months, Democrats will furiously debate how much of Ossoff’s loss was because of his inherent shortcomings, how much was due to his messaging choices, and how is due to the quirks of this particular district.
It’s long been clear that Ossoff had some serious weaknesses as a candidate. Months ago, a Democratic political consultant told me that he thought Ossoff would lose because, as a 30-year-old former congressional staffer who didn’t even live in the district, he lacked both the résumé and the local ties that most successful candidates should have.
Still, he was a fresh-faced outsider, he was easily the strongest Democratic candidate actually running in this district, and he caught fire among the party’s grassroots donors, who showered him with cash. Democrats hoped that this enthusiasm, combined with a hoped-for backlash against Trump and the GOP, could carry him to victory despite those flaws. Now, however, some will surely argue that candidates with more traditional résumés — not youngsters inspired by anti-Trump animus — are better-suited to winning.
Then, there will clearly be some second-guessing about Ossoff’s messaging choices. He didn’t focus overwhelmingly on President Trump or the GOP health bill (two topics that Handel also largely avoided). And he certainly didn’t run as an economic populist.
Instead, he emphasized his willingness to cut wasteful spending, and criticized Handel for her role in a five-year-old controversy in which the Susan G. Komen foundation, where she was a top official at the time, cut off breast cancer screening funding for Planned Parenthood.
Ossoff surely had consultants who took polls and conducted focus groups that together suggested that this was the message that worked best in this district. Perhaps that’s the case. But now that he’s lost, Democratic candidates will face increased pressure to try something different in the races to come.
Finally, there’s the matter of whether districts like the Georgia 6th are the best pickup opportunities for Democrats.
Since Trump’s victory, there’s been a debate among Democrats about whether the party’s best chances for retaking power lie in improving their performance in areas full of educated, well-off white suburbanites, or whether the party is better off making a case to the white working class. To oversimplify, the Hillary Clinton wing of the party tends to like the former theory, and the Bernie Sanders wing tends to prefer the latter.
Ossoff’s disappointing performance is a blow to the Clinton wing’s theory. Despite Trump’s sinking approval ratings, the Republican candidate still won an affluent suburban district that Trump himself barely pulled it out in.
But the Sanders wing doesn’t have the clearest-cut counter-theory either. Sanders-friendly candidates like Rob Quist in Montana and James Thompson in Kansas have done better than Hillary Clinton did in their respective districts — but so did Archie Parnell, the former Goldman Sachs employee who lost the South Carolina race Tuesday night.
All special elections are on different turf and have different issues and candidate dynamics at play. The one thing that is clear, though, is that Democrats haven’t found a winning formula for victory yet.
Bernie Sanders was never a Democrat, except for the brief convenience of running for their 2016 Presidential nomination. He has always been some variety of socialist independent commie, and he announced after the 2016 campaign that he would resume being registered as an Independent.
I actually have some sympathy for the Democraps in this one respect, that Sanders is NOT of their party but was able to hijack their nominating process for a while.
Ofc Trump is not exactly a Republican, and took over their party, but that is for the better!! heh heh....
Might be awhile nationally, but Illinois could be on the verge..
I just hope this result is enough to knock that self satisfied smirk off of Trevor Noah’s face, but somehow I doubt nothing can.
Democrats rely on identity politics on the erroneous belief that is a winning strategy. This strategy is based on the concept divide to conquer. What they fail to understand is that strategy only is valid when applied to your opponent and not to your base.
...and so did their utmost to inject chaos into those 5 months.
The most expensive loss in American history. Wow. And where is all the chatter about breaking the glass ceiling?
The Dems will be foaming at the mouth today.
Look RUSSIANS!!!!!!!
LOL...Hope you flood the market and put some foreign salt Companies out of business!
(have you thought of marketing the bi-product, Pure Salt Free Liberal Drinking Water?.....Perrier and Fiji could be in danger..
outspent her 5-to-1.
Ditto. Maybe they were just expecting blue collar types to fall inline. They did fall inline for Obama in 08 and 12.
Real Americans don’t like;
Sore loosers
Cheaters
Liers
Carpetbaggers
And he is all 4.
“Democrats have found comfort in several of their losses in open seat House elections this year, because the candidates they’ve put up came far closer to winning than Hillary Clinton did in those districts.”
I think the Democrats are chasing a mirage, seeing what they want to see. Trump was not the type of Republican who was going to do well in Georgia — that is to say, he was a non-military, moderate northeast Republican. The Democrats think that running a strong race is evidence of dissatisfaction with Trump when the telling thing was that despite gobs of money thrown into that district race they couldn’t capitalize on it.
Could it be people for the most part are fed with the rabid hate with the Democrat/Liberal establishment
Could it be people for the most part are fed with the rabid hate with the Democrat/Liberal establishment
And why would there be? Obamacare isn't Social Security, unlike Social Security where virtually everybody has some skin in the game, only 15% of the public qualify for Obamacare and only about half of that number are actually participating. So essentially 85% don't really care one way or the other if Obamacare goes, stays, is replaced by the Republican plan, or something in between.
Californian Collusion!
The Cali’s are coming, run, hide your women and children, the Cali’s are coming!
The FNC reporter embedded at Handel’s election central said her numbers rose dramatically after the shooting. I don’t think it was from sympathy. More like because all voters are sick of the unhinged left. Of course, that’s just my opinion; I could be wrong.
“Since Trump’s victory, there’s been a debate among Democrats about whether the party’s best chances for retaking power lie in improving their performance in areas full of educated, well-off white suburbanites, or whether the party is better off making a case to the white working class.”
The Dem dilemma is how either strategy plays with the non-white low-information voters; they basically have to talk out of both sides of their mouths to sucker ANY whites into voting for them while placating the unassimilated malcontents of various colors.
Looks like an out-of-state candidate, trying to win with out-of-state money has quite a hurdle to overcome. Congratulations to the good People of GA for not allowing that to happen.
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