'Grats on your GA-06 win.
Handel’s got this.
It’s possible I misunderstand her role. I assumed that since she said gay people shouldn’t be able to adopt kids in the great state of Georgia because Jesus, she will have some say in the matter. And others relevant to the people of the great state of Georgia. No need to be snippy.
It’s quite possible I misunderstood what Ms. or Mr. Tooth was trying to say. Under which Republican are people going to suffer, “in the meantime”?
Since when do Congress critters have a “say” in local state laws?
And:
CNN projects Republican Karen Handel wins the special Congressional election in the Georgia 6th, beating Democrat Jon Ossoff.
:smack: Looks like I misunderstood originally. I thought he was referring to Trump, didn’t realize he was talking about Handel. My apologies.
As I predicted, both races went to the Republican candidates. Archie Parnell managed a pretty good showing (indicative, I think, of just how bad a candidate Ralph Norman was; they started running ads around here where the point was to vote Republican, with almost no mention of his name). But, in the end run, it was not enough, and never was going to be enough. Same in Georgia.
When Democrats actually win an election they weren’t supposed to win, then they can start making claims about progress, and how well they are doing.
Thank you for your kind permission. I’ll spread the word.
This seems needlessly pessimistic. Democrats shouldn’t crow about how well they’re doing, but they also shouldn’t be too disheartened by these results. Once more: these were safe enough seats that Republicans left them to be cabinet members, confident it wouldn’t affect the House. The fact that that was true is less interesting than the degree to which the races were competitive.
In 2018, there are going to be a lot more races up for grabs, and they’re going to be a lot more competitive. My hope is that the Democratic party looks at the ground they’ve gained in strongly conservative districts, and they go for a 50-state, 435-district campaign in 2018. Make Republicans fight for every seat; make as little as possible be safe for them.
Well I disagree and I’m not really sure what you’re upset about. If anyone expected Republicans to lose districts they’ve held onto for decades, then they’re daydreaming. But the fact that Republicans had to devote a lot of energy and money to hold onto seats they really shouldn’t have lost a wink of sleep over indicates there’s an opportunity for Democrats.
It’s not just about notching meaningless moral victories either. One of my biggest complaints, and indeed I think one of the biggest reasons why Democrats have lost power over the last 20-30 years, is that they’ve become a party of the multicultural city. They’ve abandoned flyover country. They won’t even visit. That’s an infection that spread to areas that they should have won, and that tendency is one HUGE reason why they lost in 2016. But they were losing before that as a party long before Hillary shockingly lost to Donald Trump last year.
Yeah, Ossoff lost this race – I expected him to. But, he was highly competitive in a congressional race in a reliably republican district. If we have more of that, I don’t even care if Donald Trump makes it to 2020 and hands over the re-election to Mike Pence. The real underlying weakness of the Democratic party has been a tendency to give up the white vote on the assumption that the minority and white academia was going to be a powerful enough demographic trend to defeat republicans. It didn’t work out that way but now they’re actually visiting white suburban and rural America again. And they’re almost winning.
I don’t think there are as many competitive Republican-held House districts as you imagine.
But by all means, I support and endorse the Democrat 50-state strategy. Don’t focus your time and money anywhere, spread the wealth around.
GOP districts won by the Republican candidate in 2016 by an average margin of around 20% or more are being won now by 3-7% over the last few contests. I wonder what happens in districts that Republicans won by, say, less than 10%.
Speaking as a Dem, the only possible negative I see tonight besides a loss (which was expected) is the internal debate that occurs within the party. No doubt, Bernie Bros and West Coast Lefties will be saying Ossoff should have run harder to the left.
Let’s hypothesize that Republicans lose those. How many of them are out there?
What you think has as little to do with it as imagination has to do with it: I write what I write based on analysis:
I’d love to see a blowout next year. This election doesn’t point to one–but it does point to a general move toward Democratic candidates.
I also suspect that the upcoming vote on AHCA is going to open some eyes, but that’s another discussion :).
Perhaps the Dems have lost an opportunity by not trying a variety of approaches. Consider it an experiment and use it to gather data to help decide whether running further to the left would be likely to pay off.
I know not every district is the same, but when its such an uphill battle perhaps the better use of resources would be to try a new approach and experiment a bit.
I am. I’m willing to concede all the “moral victories” to the Democrats, but I confidently predict that the Speaker of the House will be a Republican in the next Congress.
I’m disappointed, but not surprised.
I pretty much figured that I’d be disappointed if I hoped for anything different.