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.
Sorry. I meant to say that the candidate lives out-of-district.
Time for all the excuses. Let’s face it, ossoff lost because Republicans are sexists. /s
Speaking of collusion with the Russians... where’s the outrage and special counsel on Obama collusion with Syria during his presidential run?
JULY 2008 : (OBAMA COLLUDING, VIA HIS ANTI-ISRAEL ADVISOR [AND FORMER GEORGE SCHULTZ SPEECHWRITER] DAVID KURTZER, WITH SYRIAN LEADER ASSAD ON HOW TO HANDLE BUSH... WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE?)
Team McCain Conference Call: Rudy on Obama Aide’s Syrian Adventure
hotair.com ^ | August 20, 2008 | Ed Morrissey
Posted by Free ThinkerNY
...the trip taken by Barack Obama adviser David Kurtzer to Syria in July [2008]. ...Mayor Giuliani told the conference that the fact that the trip was not disclosed at the time shows Obama’s inexperience and irresponsibility on foreign policy. ...Obama included Assad on his list of world leaders he would meet without preconditions....Kurtzer advised the Assad regime on how to handle the Bush administration, and Obama should have disclosed this at the time...
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt...
More winning!!!
II Chronicles 7:14!!!!!!!!!!!....Thank you Lord for answered prayers!!!!!! Let’s promote this in the headlines!!
We have a President and First Lady (just the beginning of a hundred folks) who are stand up Americans and want MAGA!!! We want NOT to be Europe and other hell holes and show the world that we are a Christian nation.
AMEN.....AMEN.....AMEN, AMEN, AMEN....SING IT OVER!!!
They will move farther left.
How can a congressional staffer be an outsider?
Here is the problem. Democrats, like Vox, don't think about what they are saying. They say things that in the back of our mind just do not compute.
Based on anecdotal eavesdropping at work and other places, my guess is that Ossoff gained 1% by emphasizing cutting spending. He lost 1% by living outside the district. He lost 3% by being a congressional staffer, a Beltway insider.
If the Democrats want to win, they need to find candidates who live in the district. Those candidates need to be identified with something other than the Democrat Party. Ideally, they need to be identified with local successful popular business ... eg not the cable company, not a lawyer.
But indications are that establishment politicians do not learn the lessons the voters try to teach them. That is probably true of Republicans also. Nov 2016 said voters want someone who has a spine and some courage. Yet the Republican establishment in Congress has yet to find a spine or courage.
It is just as likely that the Republican establishment will blow it in 2018 as the Democrats will blow it.
Libs don't eat those kind of sandwiches. They don't like bread.
dems gonna be madder and madder and start doing stupider things.
But Vox still has hope that one will happen.
He got his Ossbeatoff. NEXT!!!
Even if the GOP came up with a "perfect" healthcare bill, the obstructionist socialist democratic party would stir up a "backlash".
I'm wondering if the GOP Senators have kept the details of their plan secret at least until this election and the one in SC were over to avoid stirring up the so-called backlash votes.
Hahahahahaha. Oh, yes...Hahahahahahaha.
While I am quite happy the idiot lost, why would you run a can that doesnt live in the district??, im NOT at all happy we had to spend 25 million on a seat we should easily win.. yeah they spent a boatload... but so did we. and we shouldnt have had to...
Good analysis, Vince.
The Dem problem is they do too much navel gazing. The answer for them is to gaze outward at the people — What do they want? How can we better their lives?
“We The People” is the source of Trump’s Strength.
And to misquote H. L, Mencken. “We Democrats know what’s good for the People and they deserve to get it good and hard!”
Nor will they if they stick with the Pajama Boy image as their dressed down and ready for bed Antifa frontline. They expect people to rebel against chaos tey ave deliberately created. This is madness. It is time for the Democrat version of Karl Marx to be shot in the head and buried at sea.
Put up a Dem against Ryan in Janesville WI and I’ll donate! That’s the seat the GOP needs to LOSE!!
‘outspent her 5-to-1’
Actually Ossoff outspent Handle 7 to 1:
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/6ij7gg/karen_handel_wins_in_georgia_special_election/
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.