Georgia Election Results: Handel Defeats Ossoff in U.S. House Race

[Tom Servo]

Georgia Election Results: Handel Defeats Ossoff in U.S. House Race

NYTimes Live

Karen Handel, a Republican, defeated Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, in the most expensive U.S. House race in history. The election was largely seen as a referendum on the first months of Donald J. Trump’s presidency. Republicans maintain control of the seat, which was vacated by Tom Price, the new secretary of health and human services.

[Tom Servo]

Lots of charts and graphs for the wonks. If this election was supposed to be a repudiation of Trump's politics, it has failed, miserably.

[Newman]

The Ds were so ready to win this, to "flip the 6th."

[Michele]

Rep Seth Moulton (D-MA)

[Newman]

Rep Seth Moulton (D-MA)

Dems should pay attention. They've doubled down on the hate-Trump angle, and the turn-out-the-base ground game angle, and rolled snake eyes. They have NOT tried introspection, as he suggests.

But there's something else. Moulton represents a liberal MA district north of Boston, calls himself a progressive Democrat, has compared Trump to Hitler, generally supports Sen. Warren (she endorsed him), and is generally an undistinguished, liberal Democrat. He was unopposed for re-election in 2016.

His Tweets sing a song I think the Dems have to learn, but I'll have to see the lyrics to see if we're hearing something new, or if we're retooling the message again, learning The Language of Jobs or something.

[Newman]

Reviewing some reports of this GA race in some lefty media, and I see excuses all over the place.

My favorite was CNN, "Republican Karen Handel wins Georgia House special election" (Eric Bradner), which includes a marvelous rewrite of the liberal vexation, "Why do we have so many people incarcerated if the crime rate has gone down?!" (Bold added.)

Handel's victory showed that even with Republicans in power, the GOP's message in recent election cycles -- focused largely on urging voters to reject House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi -- remains potent.

You'd think that once Republicans were elected and came into power, their "message" would lose potency, wouldn't you?

If you're a CNN "journalist," I mean.

The CNN piece goes on to suggest this special election could "show House incumbents that they can separate themselves from Trump effectively on the campaign trail, and stave off a potential wave of retirements."

This too is interesting analysis in light of Ossoff's decision to start toning down his anti-Trump stump bit,

[Ossoff] tacked carefully toward the center, running a far more moderate campaign than when he began his bid by offering voters a chance to “make Trump furious.”

His toned-down message was clear during the candidates’ only prime-time debate earlier this month, when Ossoff passed on a chance to criticize Trump’s travel ban....

just as Handel was becoming more supportive, saying she'd vote for "Trumpcare," for example.

One report I saw (Politico) notes that

though she didn’t even say the word “Trump” on election night, her mention of “The President of the United States” drew the loudest cheers of all.

and chants of "Trump! Trump! Trump!"

The subhead of this Politico piece is, "The GOP base stands with Trump. And Democrats still don't have a message." Maybe Politico could send a note to CNN.

And the second part of that subhead is as wrong as wrong could be. Politico itself includes one scenario, which seems to propose the Democratic idea that if voters don't like liberals, they'll for some reason love progressives (bold added):

“Tonight’s result is disheartening to everyone who volunteered to help out another Democrat in Congress. The unforced errors by the party leadership and the campaign present an important learning opportunity for everyone who wants to kick Republicans out of power in 2018,” said Jim Dean, the chairman of Democracy For America, in a statement on Tuesday night. “Defeating Republicans in districts that they have traditionally held requires doing something drastically different than establishment Democrats have done before — specifically, running on a bold progressive vision and investing heavily in direct voter contact to expand the electorate. That’s what it will take to win districts like this one in 2018 and take back the House. The same, tired centrist Democratic playbook that has come up short cycle after cycle will not suffice.”

One might note that Bernie Sanders and I think Lizzie Warren both endorsed all the losing Dems in special elections this time around. Some insomniacs might suggest the progressive segment of the electorate isn't large enough to win a general election, and is especially weak in conservative areas.

Meanwhile, the WaPost article cited above has more hidden gems, including this precious insight into the condescension of the legacy media (emphasis reversed):

In dozens of interviews on the ground over three days, most Republicans and many independents who have concerns about the House bill stressed that they still detest Obamacare. Their expectations might seem unreasonable to anyone who is closely following the debate or is steeped in the complexities of public policy, but they believe Donald Trump can and should enact a replacement plan that will both reduce their costs and improve their quality of care.

"Anyone." A WaPost "journalist" for example.

Anyway, contrary to the second part of the Politico subhead, the Dems do have a message. The "journalist" in the Wapost report, James Hohmann (with Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve), presents another progressive Democrat in full regalia:

[Trumpcare] has certainly helped galvanize Democratic energy. Melissa Holloway, 32, is a registered nurse who works with Medicaid recipients. The Democrat wore a “Not My President” T-shirt as she joined two dozen friends for an impromptu protest outside Price’s rally for Handel. “I believe health care is a human right,” she said. “Most of the people who are going to be hurt by Trumpcare are already disadvantaged. … That’s what real terrorism looks like.”

No, Ms. Holloway, it's not what "real terrorism" looks like. But this is what real Democrats look like, and I don't think it's winning friends or influencing people.

[Lady Marva]

Mr. Ossoff appeared so close to victory that Democrats were allowing themselves to imagine a win that would spur a wave of Republican retirements, a recruitment bonanza and a Democratic fund-raising windfall heading into the 2018 midterm elections.

These people are delusional. They ran a 30-something man against a mature woman in a district like that?

[JB]

My only hope is they learn nothing. Stay the course Democratics.

Russians!11!!1!!!11

[Billy Jingo]

SC-05 was closer. Weird.

[Newman]

These people are delusional. They ran a 30-something man against a mature woman in a district like that?

One party broke the fabled glass ceiling, sending the first woman from their Party to represent the state in Congress. Democrats can surely join in celebrating this small victory for identity politics.

[Newman]

SC-05 was closer. Weird.

And significant. Podhoretz this morning is absolutely correct, though he doesn't mention SC. Note his conclusion below.

What Democrats can learn from spending $30M on a House race — and losing

Before we go overboard analyzing the meaning of the narrow special-election victory of a Republican in a Republican district, we should remember how it came to be that a Democrat named Jon Ossoff managed to raise and spend more than $30 million in this House race — the most expensive such race in history by a very large margin — only to lose it....

There’s no question national Democratic enthusiasm is real. The issue going forward for them and for Republicans goes to sustainability. The disappointment that will follow the Ossoff result could depress that enthusiasm at exactly the wrong moment.

That $30 million could’ve funded six House races next year in which Democrats would’ve had a better shot than they did here. Democrats only need to flip 24 Republican seats to take majority control of the House — and there are 23 districts held by Republicans that Hillary Clinton actually won in 2016. The Ossoff district wasn’t one of them.

The Georgia results ought to be a warning shot for Democrats, not a battle cry. They have to be smarter. They have to spend their money more wisely. They have to win where they can, not where they hope to.

As for Republicans and Trump: They, too, need to be cold-eyed and ruthless about what last night meant. It wasn’t great news for them to win a district by a margin 19 points lower than the one in November 2016. Triumphalism would be short-sighted and foolish. This was no triumph. They dodged a bullet.

It was indeed a very big bullet dodged.

But the old proverb about pride goeth before the fall applies to Republicans, too.

(Still, one further note. The large margins of previous Republican wins in some of these districts represent essentially uncontested races, in which the Dem opposition raised zero dollars and spent about as much. A narrower margin doesn't represent a shift of sentiment in those places so much as a truer representation of it.)

[Norm dePlume]

One party broke the fabled glass ceiling, sending the first woman from their Party to represent the state in Congress. Democrats can surely join in celebrating this small victory for identity politics.

She is not the first woman elected to the House. You know that, right?

If one party in one state chose to wear a glass hat for a while, that is not the same as a glass ceiling.

[Newman]

Reviewing some reports of this GA race in some lefty media, and I see excuses all over the place.

My favorite was CNN, "Republican Karen Handel wins Georgia House special election" (Eric Bradner), which includes a marvelous rewrite of the liberal vexation, "Why do we have so many people incarcerated if the crime rate has gone down?!" (Bold added.)

Handel's victory showed that even with Republicans in power, the GOP's message in recent election cycles -- focused largely on urging voters to reject House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi -- remains potent.

You'd think that once Republicans were elected and came into power, their "message" would lose potency, wouldn't you?

If you're a CNN "journalist," I mean.

The CNN piece goes on to suggest this special election could "show House incumbents that they can separate themselves from Trump effectively on the campaign trail, and stave off a potential wave of retirements."

This too is interesting analysis in light of Ossoff's decision to start toning down his anti-Trump stump bit, just as Handel was becoming more supportive, saying she'd vote for "Trumpcare," for example.

One report I saw (Politico) notes that and chants of "Trump! Trump! Trump!"

The subhead of this Politico piece is, "The GOP base stands with Trump. And Democrats still don't have a message." Maybe Politico could send a note to CNN.

[...]

Meanwhile, the WaPost article cited above has more hidden gems, including this precious insight into the condescension of the legacy media (emphasis reversed):

In dozens of interviews on the ground over three days, most Republicans and many independents who have concerns about the House bill stressed that they still detest Obamacare. Their expectations might seem unreasonable to anyone who is closely following the debate or is steeped in the complexities of public policy, but they believe Donald Trump can and should enact a replacement plan that will both reduce their costs and improve their quality of care.

"Anyone." A WaPost "journalist" for example.

My only hope is they learn nothing. Stay the course Democratics.

Russians!11!!1!!!11

Enthusiastic "journalists" are NOT helping Democrats by being such dim-witted shills.

Camille Paglia (a liberal Dem who voted for Jill Stein, it's worth remembering) went on a mini-rant about it:

Paglia called what she said the Democratic Party had done to journalism “absolutely grotesque” and warned it would take decades to recover.

“It’s obscene,” she said. “It’s outrageous, OK? It shows that the Democrats are nothing now but words and fantasy and hallucination and Hollywood. There’s no journalism left. What’s happened to The New York Times? What’s happened to the major networks? It’s an outrage.”

“I’m a professor of media studies, in addition to a professor of humanities, OK?” she continued. “And I think it’s absolutely grotesque the way my party has destroyed journalism. Right now, it is going to take decades to recover from this atrocity that’s going on where the news media have turned themselves over to the most childish fraternity, kind of buffoonish behavior.”

Paglia would have to convince me that the Democratic Party proper is responsible for the clear dissolution of the profession, if that's her position. My impression is that journalists and J-schools merrily chose this path themselves, liberal/progressive to the core and committed to the mission of enlightening the dim-witted, and actively opposing the conservative Dark Side (manifestations of Nixon's 5 o'clock shadow); but they always described themselves as independent of political party.

She might say the "registered Independent" line was always a lie, and I'd be hard-pressed to disagree.

The larger point, though, that mainstream journalism is in the toilet, in inarguable, I think.

[Newman]

She is not the first woman elected to the House. You know that, right?

Yes, even though I read otherwise in a sloppy right-side essay somewhere.

The WaPost piece I cited mentions Cynthia McKinney, and in my post I wrote "sending the first woman from their Party...."

If one party in one state chose to wear a glass hat for a while, that is not the same as a glass ceiling.

In a broader view (no pun intended; I'd never stoop that low!) breaking such barriers depends as much or more on the proliferation of examples, than on the "ground-breaker," as such a "pioneer" or "path-finder" used to be called.

A lonely precedent may be "the exception that proves the rule." As I recall, for example and without using a Google-is-your-friend cheat sheet, the first women in Congress were the widows of long-serving Reps, and didn't represent a genuine expansion in career opportunities for women in general.

One might seque from that observation to commenting on Hillary's similar dependence on her husband's "coattails" more than her innate talents, but I would never do that.

[scott]

Yes, even though I read otherwise in a sloppy right-side essay somewhere.

The WaPost piece I cited mentions Cynthia McKinney, and in my post I wrote "sending the first woman from their Party...."

In a broader view (no pun intended; I'd never stoop that low!) breaking such barriers depends as much or more on the proliferation of examples, than on the "ground-breaker," as such a "pioneer" or "path-finder" used to be called.

A lonely precedent may be "the exception that proves the rule." As I recall, for example and without using a Google-is-your-friend cheat sheet, the first women in Congress were the widows of long-serving Reps, and didn't represent a genuine expansion in career opportunities for women in general.

One might seque from that observation to commenting on Hillary's similar dependence on her husband's "coattails" more than her innate talents, but I would never do that.

Yes that would be too much of a broad accusation.