OSSOFF v HANDEL

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/20/15831624/georgia-special-election-jon-ossoff-karen-handel-live-updates

I may have said this on the board before but I think Ossoff sucks as a candidate. The lesson Dems keep saying they're going to learn is that you have to convince people to vote FOR you and not AGAINST the other guy (or in this case, bigoted lady). Aside from being young though I don't see anything from Ossoff that convinces me he's actually going to inspire enough people to go stand in line and mark his name on a ballot. Hope to God I'm wrong though because this would be a huge victory if he can pull it off.

lol

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/BFVmYaQ5Km43Qw7_smUPiDCJXhg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8713365/TrumpTwetHandle.png

don't know much about Ossoff but it would be really depressing if he lost

listened to ossoff on NPR this morning, just not compelling, stuff about 'cutting spending and balancing budgets', i barely remember anything else he said because it was so boilerplate politican. he'll prob lose

my totally off-the-wall prediction is that the guy in South Carolina, while also losing, does better relative to expectations than Ossoff.

can't wait to see how well GOP voter suppression techniques work this time around

She doesn't believe in a livable wage though.

I may have said this on the board before but I think Ossoff sucks as a candidate. The lesson Dems keep saying they're going to learn is that you have to convince people to vote FOR you and not AGAINST the other guy (or in this case, bigoted lady). Aside from being young though I don't see anything from Ossoff that convinces me he's actually going to inspire enough people to go stand in line and mark his name on a ballot. Hope to God I'm wrong though because this would be a huge victory if he can pull it off.

― evol j, 20. juni 2017 14:43 (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ossoff isn't very inspiring, which is exactly why it would be such a good sign if he wins. But if he loses, the left can use that as a great argument for exactly what you're saying. Honestly, tonight is a win-win :)

lol

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCufWcZXgAQNl0g.jpg

I suppose I understand the argument that in a GOP-dominated district a Dem candidate has to be wussier, but we should stop wooing Republican voters with diluted Republicanism and offer them liberalism. If the candidate loses anyway, at least we'll know the half life of liberalism in GOP districts.

god is that fundraising email real? yes, let's try hysterically scolding people into giving us more money.

Ossoff has raised five or six times more money than Handel so if he loses it's on him.

and what will money buy at this point – gas to drive people to polling stations?

my family & lots of friends' families who live there say that the Dem ground operation is very strong, people are showing up to drive to the polls all elderly people who have indicated they'll vote for Ossoff (never mind that to live in that area you'd be hard pressed to avoid being able to drive)

the GOP will win

It's 50-50. But it's a GOP district, so they SHOULD win. The Dems will overperform :)

and Trump will boast on Twitter about it the entire morning, because the world has absolutely no consequences for him

as it should be, because he was born into serious family money, even though 'we're a free country, liberty / justice for all'

Not to set the bar too high, but I feel if a moderate dem candidate with ample funding and some sense of momentum can't beat a conservative republican in a moderate and well educated republican district, with Trump at his lowest (so far) in the polls, we're all doomed. Because if they can't flip this seat, which is also stuffed with symbolic value, that means a) they probably can't flip any republican district and b) even moderate well educated republicans still support Trump. All of my hopes lie with the local suburban mom gotv effort, because they seem to be driving this train.

exactly - Handel winning this sends a pretty strong message that Trump's blatant corruption and idiocy ultimately won't affect them. Winners win, losers lose, etc etc

Not to set the bar too high, but I feel if a moderate dem candidate with ample funding and some sense of momentum can't beat a conservative republican in a moderate and well educated republican district, with Trump at his lowest (so far) in the polls, we're all doomed.

eh not really – we haven't seen peak Trump meltdown yet. Give it another few months if we're still alive.

local elections are normally responsive to local issues more than national issues (an exception: the recent legislative election in France), I don't think things have gotten so obviously bad in the USA that this election will be an exception. I.e what Alfred said

Tom Price won the seat by 23% last November. And GOP money is pouring in as well.

a lot of attention will be paid to this congressional race. if this guy can't beat paul ryan we're def fucked

Randy Bryce is running against @SpeakerRyan in 2018. He was genetically engineered from Bruce Springsteen songs. pic.twitter.com/XD9bOEeOkl

— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 20, 2017

Claiming an Ossoff loss as any sort of win, for any reasons - look at the turnout! we beat expectations! - is foolish. It's not better than pointing to the looming demographic bomb as proof of the GOP demise. People have been saying that for decades, and America just elected not just the worst president ever but one of the worst people ever.

posted this in the dem direction thread, maybe it's more appropriate here:

https://www.thenation.com/article/women-are-leading-the-charge-in-georgias-sixth-congressional-district/

Because if they can't flip this seat, which is also stuffed with symbolic value, that means a) they probably can't flip any republican district

Don't agree. This is a strongly Republican seat. If Handel wins by 2% and the GOP concludes "everyone's on board with our agenda" they're fools.

if this guy can't beat paul ryan we're def fucked

I like the ad too but the Bryce doesn't come off as a natural speaker. This is his third time running for office; he got crushed in a Democratic primary in 2012 and he got crushed by his Republican opponent for a state senate seat in 2014. Ryan's district isn't that Republican but he's a long-time incumbent, he'll have all the money he needs, and he's really good at running for office. I think WI-7 and WI-8 are both more flippable (by the right candidate.)

Again, I don't know! We're only six months into a Trump administration. That the race is this close speaks to changing demographics and the unpopularity of the man in the Oval Office, but, again, it's only been six months. A GOP win wouldn't shatter me; it took this much money to win a race that the party handily won eight months ago?

xpost "Let's trade places. Paul Ryan, you can work the iron, and I will go to DC." That's a great ad.

Dems are definitely going for a win, so a loss wouldn't be a win... But if Handel wins by a point or so, it doesn't mean that everyone is doomed. It's still a good sign for 2018.

Claiming an Ossoff loss as any sort of win, for any reasons - look at the turnout! we beat expectations! - is foolish.

I think it's just as foolish to interpret "Handel wins by 1%" and "Ossoff wins by 1%" as telling drastically different stories about the political landscape.

good god, sorry to bring this up again but these emails are outrageous. political 'consultants' are poison

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCvb81fV0AA2FrU.jpg:large

what's depressing is they wouldn't still be sending these unless they worked

xpost It's not about trends, it's about electing democrats to office! When do the democrats just to win on the ground, and not just some hypothetical election reflecting shifting political landscapes, changing demographics and redrawn districts? 1%, 5%, who the fuck cares? It's not like squeaking into office gets you less of a vote on the floor.

We're only six months into a Trump administration.

What more are Trump supporters waiting for? To see if he actually helps push through a health bill that will hurt millions? Cut taxes that will hurt millions? If the intent isn't bad enough, if everything he's said or done for almost two years isn't bad enough, then nothing is. Six months? When is a good cut off? Six years? Because unless the dems manage to take back the house in 2018, I suspect that's what we're going to get, because it shows GOP voters will literally put up with anything.

"get to win," not "just to win."

Like, reducing GOP win margins is a good start, but until they start overtaking them, by however much, it's kind of meaningless.

those emails, what the fuck

I've been getting them, too, and they are so smug and smarmy. They might as well say "because of you we're barely tied, you asshole, so give me more money!!!!"

the CRM they're using apparently doesn't fix capitalization errors in people's names either

What more are Trump supporters waiting for? To see if he actually helps push through a health bill that will hurt millions? Cut taxes that will hurt millions? If the intent isn't bad enough, if everything he's said or done for almost two years isn't bad enough, then nothing is. Six months? When is a good cut off? Six years? Because unless the dems manage to take back the house in 2018, I suspect that's what we're going to get, because it shows GOP voters will literally put up with anything.

Trump voters are mostly GOP voters and they are incorrigible.

Isn't this like the third or fourth post-inauguration "referendum on Trumpism" bellwether election? Hard to see through the hype.

When do the democrats just to win on the ground, and not just some hypothetical election reflecting shifting political landscapes, changing demographics and redrawn districts?

2018 :)

xp yeah, but this one is by far the closest in polling and the one that both parties are pouring the most resources into

Like,2018 is the one that matters, all these special elections don't really matter, they won't change the balance in the house, they won't do a thing, really. And they've all been in solidly red districts. 2018 is when it matters.

I know we've gone over this, but how many house seats can the Dems likely flip? Like, in places that are not "solidly red?"

Fred get real. Every seat counts. It's impossible to know what happens in 2018, what'll be important, what bill will need just two votes to get over the line.

Even without flipping something as red as Georgia 6th, it could well be enough to flip the house.

When do the democrats just to win on the ground, and not just some hypothetical election reflecting shifting political landscapes, changing demographics and redrawn districts?

When there are elections being held in districts that aren't 65% Republican, like the state legislative seats Dems have already flipped in New Hampshire and New York. And if you don't think the long effortful close-to-the-ground process of changing the balance in state legislatures isn't important, you haven't been paying attention to what the Republicans have been doing for the past 30 years.

i think i'm rooting for a close loss. a loss because fuck this republican with a D next to his name, close for what it would possibly mean for 2018

ok i'm not actually rooting for a loss. but it wouldn't be the end of the world, it's one seat

otm. And the Berniecrats overperforming in Montana and Kansas compared to Ossoff wouldn't be a bad thing...

Fred it's not just "flipping the house", it's specific bills. Even with a nominally Democratic House some bills will need more help than others. Every close race is an opportunity. Agree this guy isn't the greatest.

There will be another election in Georgia 6th in 2018 no matter what, so what happens after that doesn't really depend on tonight.

and what will money buy at this point – gas to drive people to polling stations?

this might actually work. my biggest mistake handicapping the potus election last year was assuming the vaunted obama gotv operation would be in effect. dems apparently have forgotten that you win by getting warm bodies into voting booths. i guess i'm feeling pessimistic so i'm predicting a handel win. ossoff blows. boring af.

Glad someone brought up those emails. I get like 10 of them everyday for months with the same cataclysmic language and even emails saying that they know I've been opening their emails but not donating anything (they've got the technology for that? Seems a bit like spying). For a while I thought they were scammers pretending to be democrats.
I sign a lot of petitions and through that I must have gotten on their mailing list. I get Rob Quist and somebody else's emails but they're so not over the top.

Oh man I thought Quist's were just as bad tbh

pretty sure there are a fairly substantial number of House seats for 2018 that are considered easier pickups for Dems than GA-6 so I don't think an Ossoff loss spells doom for 2018 by any stretch.

and as much as I have zero enthusiasm for him, this hoping-Ossoff-loses bullshit is just so supremely depressing. just makes me think we're headed for a 2020 when Trump beats Cory Booker cuz pure lefties couldn't deign to hold their precious noses.

Yes, e-mail marketing services can track how users interact with e-mails.

my biggest mistake handicapping the potus election last year was assuming the vaunted obama gotv operation would be in effect. dems apparently have forgotten that you win by getting warm bodies into voting booths.

In the Midwest, at any rate, this is not a matter of the Democrats "forgetting" anything or haughtily taking votes for granted or whatever. The hard work of getting warm Democratic bodies into voting booths is done by unions and the state government has assiduously done everything it can to make sure unions are starved of money and members. I believe this has a much bigger effect on turnout than voter ID does (though I have no empirical back-up for this.) I also think that electoral power, not a desire to immiserate the worker, is the primary reason GOP governors have worked so hard to kneecap unions.

Fred an election win carries momentum. Look at Corbyn. Elections carry their own story-making power. It makes a difference!

There will be another election in Georgia 6th in 2018 no matter what, so what happens after that doesn't really depend on tonight.

yeah but a 2018 election with a Democratic incumbent in the seat would be a bit easier to win

Right

Tracer, Corbyn didn't win...

Didn't say he did

those emails are insane, my god

I've gotten ~5 emails/day of that sort since I donated to the Quist campaign six weeks ago.

Then I don't get your point, Tracer. Of course elections has story-power, that's exactly why I'm saying don't only judge on who wins and who loses. There are stories to be spun out from a narrow loss as well. I mean, it's a better sign for 2018 the more votes the Dems get, but if you dislike candidates like Ossoff and disagree that that should be the future strategy for Dem, then there's a lot of ways to win tonight, and not that many to lose :)

The mobilization of suburban women that they describe in that article voodoo posted is really important; I think that has massive implications. I bet that article got shared like fucking crazy, too. This is a much longer and better piece on the topic, though:
https://www.thecut.com/2017/06/jon-ossoff-karen-handel-georgia-race-white-suburban-women-activists.html

I feel like the GOP's back bench being reduced to raging MAGA misogynists and virulent homophobes, even in "safe" districts where a sane person could be reasonably expected to coast by, is important too; but we've been saying that and they keep winning with lunatics, cf POTUS. I just wonder when it starts to actually break down for them. Maybe today!

Ossoff being only kind of okay as a candidate is: not as important; if he remembers who he owes his seat to, I imagine he'll vote pretty dang blue if he gets in.

it almost doesn't matter what he does once he gets in office

(if he does, which, frankly I am cynical about)

Just want to say that "suburban moms who I don't think of as political suddenly revealing their inner activist" is very true to what I see around here, too. This is related to the fact that 45-year-old women in America are the people who are actually thinking about "how are my my 75-year-old parents going to get the care they need when they're 85" way way way more than anybody else

for a moment I thought we were comparing German expatriate baroque composers

let's go ossofff woohoo

i would love it if our "conservative" friends lost mick mulvaney's seat too

https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/south-carolina-house-special-election

*checks how suburban moms voted in the last election*

they know better now. mark my words. ossoff.

for a moment I thought we were comparing German expatriate baroque composers

― Dean of the University (Latham Green), 20. juni 2017 20:54 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You should make this thread (though I don't entirely get who Ossoff is supposed to be. And everyone will vote for Messiah anyway, right?)

ossoff is pronounced "pachelbel" in american english

Huh, that's a coincidence, since 'pachelbel' is pronounced 'offenbach' in danish.

(yeah, I checked wiki. what are you going to do, fp me?)

this is reasonable afacit https://medium.com/@tombonier/ga06-runoff-viewing-guide-34490167c49d

"Simplified — When the early vote results are tabulated, think of 57.2% as the target for Ossoff."

Shit http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/20/georgia-special-election-weather-flooding-239769

I caught a bit of Chuck Todd' execrable show, and he thought the weather would affect GOP voters b/c the burden was on them to come out.

That doesnt make any sense

delicious irony if carbon-jacked extreme weather hands the GA 6th to the democrat

early vote will skew democratic shakey

Did u guys miss the part that the flooding is in heavily Dem areas

no, but chuck todd maybe did

It's not my opinion!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

no the polls are closed already stupid System ur FP'd

Handel ahead in early voting

I'm seeing Ossoff just barely ahead.

That's a pretty darn good result I'd think for Handel in the Fulton early vote. But we'll see.

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) June 20, 2017

Not looking good for Ossoff right now

Looking forward to Trump being insufferable tomorrow morning

It's always the Democrats who don't have a good enough candidate, or this, or that, or some other excuse. Meanwhile any generic piece of shit Republican gets elected.

You can literally assault someone and win an election the next day. If youre Republican that is.

Their tribal bonds are tighter its not a mystery

I agree with these live posts:

Alex Burns
Political Reporter
9:23 PM ET

If Ossoff were to win, it would be taken by a lot of Democrats as a huge validation of the centrist/barely-left-of-center approach to 2018.

But yeah, if he comes up short, it’s a new opening for the left of the party to argue that only a more pointed liberal message will fire up the voters the party needs for 2018.

Alex Burns
Political Reporter
9:24 PM ET

I’m not sure it’s reasonable to argue that approach would win in the Sixth District, where there are simply way more conservatives who would be turned off by liberal policy than Democrats who would be energized by it. But there are clearly limitations to the Ossoff approach, and you’re going to see them hashed out in a lot of 2018 primaries.

Ossoff is going to pull it off #believe

I’m not sure it’s reasonable to argue that approach would win in the Sixth District, where there are simply way more conservatives who would be turned off by liberal policy than Democrats who would be energized by it.

OTM, this is literally all that needs to be said about Ossoff's centrism

This is a poor testing ground for the left/center debate.

Also it's already been proven that a hard left economic message is the answer via Jezza

i'm def on board w/ Dems actually running as actual liberals (or Leftists or whatever we call them now), but i'm not sure GA 6 is where that would actually work. i suspect most of Ossoff's biggest supporters don't really want a living wage or single payer. still, a win's a win.

also it would freak me out if all these insane commercials tying him to literal terrorists or the Scalise shooting actually worked.

Liberals are the only people with any agency in any given situation, they can choose to be moderate and reasonable adults or they can choose to be true to themselves and stand up for their principles. Of course, no matter what they do, they will always be at the mercy of the simple and pure conservatives, who can never be blamed for what they do or who they support.

Such a wonderful narrative, I'm glad we're helping perpetuate it here too.

Otm

NBC just called it for Handel.

not surprising but that's fucking embarrassing

maybe she really turned out the base when she shit all over gay parents there at the very end.

Every one of these special elections has been a longshot in solid red territory

A point that can't be overstated: This was Newt Gingrich's district for 20 consecutive years. Change is hard.

yeah i meant more the $$$ that was dumped into this longshot (most expensive House race ever?) vs. how the other 'longshots' were virtually ignored by DNC & uh celebrities

he will lose

Liberals are the only people with any agency in any given situation, they can choose to be moderate and reasonable adults or they can choose to be true to themselves and stand up for their principles. Of course, no matter what they do, they will always be at the mercy of the simple and pure conservatives, who can never be blamed for what they do or who they support.

Such a wonderful narrative, I'm glad we're helping perpetuate it here too.

jesus christ dude it's fucking white people i don't know what else to tell you

I was pretty sure the point was how close it could become (from +23 GOP to ???) and then to see whether that actually scares those assholes in purpler districts / states

Wtf Parnell only lost by 2800 votes in SC, that's crazy

Lame

This was Newt Gingrich's district for 20 consecutive years. Change is hard.

I recognize this, but Dems keep running Republican Lites, Dems keep losing.

i guess i'm once again torn between "extremely bad things will happen if this republican is elected" and "if this democrat wins nothing will change"

ultimately ossoff lost because he was a cork board with focus grouped messages pinned to it and tho i waver on it i've gotten to the point where i sleep better saying fuck those kinda guys

this twitter thread about ossoff visiting a mosque is sticking with me

Jon Ossoff came to my mosque Friday. He didnt try to win our vote, he just had a professional camera crew taking pics of him with hijabis.

— (🕋) رمضان (@FalafelDad) June 20, 2017

Wish he had won anyway, but the Dems need to wake up.

Running zombie-eyed preppies may work in six months when or if Trump is doing even worse and people start dying cuz they're sick.

cool that electing a flaming pile of corrupt garbage as POTUS hasn't affected the GOP's ability to win elections tho

people start dying cuz they're sick

Last I heard, they're deferring a lot of the medicaid cuts, etc. for as far out as 5-7 years so they'll still be around to draw the districts for the next decade.

Nut insurers are already fleeing marketplace thanks to D.C. tumult

But

Maybe in the end this will be good, dems might be slightly less likely to spend the next two years looking for the next Macron.

But still, it's horrifying to witness people still voting Republican. It's like watching someone hooked up to an oxygen tank continue to smoke.

as Mr Mencken said, no one ever went broke etc

I've seen that quote credited to P.T. Barnum, long before Mencken got up a head of steam.

This is so much more perverse than stupidity. Republicans are literally trying to kill Medicaid recipients and people are voting for them because they hate "liberals," an abstraction.

anyone (outside of the usual Fox/ talk/ internet lunatics i'm sure) trying to pin this on the Scalise shooting yet?

There's always been a hard right, but it's right-wing radio/internet/"news" that provided the sloganeering to cement dumb ideas about the left in the minds of even the most moderate conservative voters.

xp Handel talked about Scalise in her victory speech, ffs

acting like only if Ossoff was a candidate more suited to the preferences of people who would never in their lives choose to live in any part of a district like GA-6, i.e. pretty much all of ILX, then he could have won, is profoundly stupid and misses the point completely imo

So tired of the liberal half of the country looking for every opportunity to kick itself for not being good enough to ever deserve winning.

^ this

Idk man something is wrong when vast swaths of the country prefer a nihilist death cult to the Democrats. Losing is one thing, losing to cretins another.

it must be hard to be as right as tombot all the time

acting like only if Ossoff was a candidate more suited to the preferences of people who would never in their lives choose to live in any part of a district like GA-6, i.e. pretty much all of ILX, then he could have won, is profoundly stupid and misses the point completely imo

a message of "we have a better plan for improving people's lives" would not appeal only to people who use ilx

Yep

in our god blessed duopoly, the first step is always to win a party majority in whatever legislative body or executive entity you wish to control. things often get stickier beyond that, but at least you've made a good start.

about a tenth of the liberal half of the country lives in the South, right?

the Barnum attribution re the Mencken quote is bullshit.

Conservative control of legislation nationwide since the 90s has been a game of inches. Bush fucked up and gave congress back to the Dems in 2006/08 and they started playing a game of miles.

Do I want to live in a progressive utopia RIGHT NOW? Sure I do. But there are a billion factors that go into making that happen, and none of them are particularly fast-moving.

people who would never in their lives choose to live in any part of a district like GA-6

fwiw there are blue parts of GA-6 in DeKalb that are pretty much exactly like the place that I live (a few miles south of the 6th, in Hank Johnson's district)

a message of "we have a better plan for improving people's lives" would not appeal only to people who use ilx

wait, that seems to be the exact same message the guy with the baseball hat said - now I'm confused

ultimately ossoff lost because he was a cork board with focus grouped messages pinned to it and tho i waver on it i've gotten to the point where i sleep better saying fuck those kinda guys

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, June 21, 2017 2:49 AM (one hour ago)

As centrist as he is, he still would have been better than Handel's fake resume, minimum wage hating, Trumpcare supporting nonsense.

wait, that seems to be the exact same message the guy with the baseball hat said - now I'm confused

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, June 20, 2017 11:38 PM (yesterday) Bookmark

democrats shouldn't be afraid of applying a winning message to what should be their broadly appealing core principles!

can't believe "how can we appeal to right wing voters?" still isn't paying off for the Dems

The twitter thread about that mosque visit is a little questionable imo the guy's timeline is complaining about "neolibs" 24/7 and then he happens to witness that...

It sucks, but I'm not devastated by the loss: as weary as GA 6 might have been of Donald Trump, voters weren't weary of being Republicans. President Brown wasn't elected to his special election until January 2010, months after that horrendous Tea Party summer.

Good to see that the margin was as small as it was anyway surely? I saw it and thought of the Brexit referendum gap which it seemed to mirror quite closely.
But one side has still won, so hope that gets reversed next year.

The final result was something like 53/47?
I'm pretty sure the makeup of republicans in this district is higher than 53% so basically the results indicate that a democrat shift is feasible in the next presidential election. I don't see any reason to raise the alarms over this.

Figure i saw was even closer 51.9 to 48.1
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/20/politics/georgia-house-results-ossoff-handel/index.html
http://heavy.com/news/2017/06/georgia-6th-live-results-jon-ossoff-karen-handel-voting-runoff/

A shift is always feasible, but never quite seems to arrive, because most Republicans or Republican leaning voters will apparently vote for any generic piece of shit before voting for a Democrat. You can't win by losing. (I've run the numbers, and it never works.) I don't care if we enter an era of progressive utopia tomorrow, I just want to creep toward a majority enough to stop Trump and further hinder his agenda, which likely has three more years to stumble forward. And yeah, there will be other chances to flip districts in 2018, but if the GOP's explicit anti-human platform and the waddling embarrassment that is Trump can't deliver that now, I don't see why it will happen in 2018. Expect more think pieces about shifting demographics, young people voting, the death of the GOP and other things that never seem to happen ... It would take so little to shift the field, but struggling to do it again and again and succeeding only every few elections is way too one step forward, two steps back. It's demoralizing, it hurts momentum, and every day Trump is in office is worse and worse for America and the world.

Josh, Alfred just made the point that the GOP didn't win a special election after 2008 until Scott Brown, which was in January 2010. If this had been for Senate, like that one was, I think it could have been swung our way; and it also makes the point that losing this is in no way a preview of 2018. Drawing within 3-4 points in one of the most dedicated red suburbs in Georgia could be seen as one though but I take it that's a little nuanced.

My take is that the most realistic way to see this result is that it is one of a string of special elections in which Democrats have dramatically over-performed in Republican districts. Yet they haven’t been able to win any of them yet. There were two before this (Kansas and Montana) and another tonight (South Carolina) where the Democrat also lost but got a lot closer than people expected.

If you take the average Democratic over-performance in these districts and apply it to the entire House, Democrats are quite likely to take the House next year.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/thoughts-on-the-disappointing-result-out-of-georgia-6

Are they "quite likely" to take the House, or is it just within reach?

Because the dems keep losing not just to total nothings, but totally bad candidates, including people charged with assaults the day before elections, or Trump, or whoever. One point, five points, three points, half a point. If the Dems have to struggle and spend millions against generic GOP candidates just to come close, in a relatively favorable environment, I don't see how they pull that off on a national scale.

Josh do you understand the difference between extremely red districts and "purple" ones?

josh they're barely losing in districts so deep red that trump felt safe plucking their representatives for his cabinet

"Barely losing" is not a winnable strategy.

I know there are seemingly more red districts than "purple" ones. And I know that even then "purple" only means more or less swing districts, or districts that could go either way, but they do seem to trend GOP. That is, it always seems like it's the Dems that have to struggle and spend and work hard to win, uphill, never the other way around. And this is with terrible GOP policies. That's not a good situation.

Like, I get it. I see how the numbers look and where the trends point. That's promising. But in the meantime everything is going to shit, and even if the Dems get back into power their agenda will be limited at best to stopping or undoing all the horrible stuff Trump is doing.

The GOP had to work extremely hard to retain Georgia 6.

Wtf it seems South Carolina was closer than Georgia. Is that correct?

"Barely losing" is ridiculously encouraging given this district's track record, and waving away that information just seems like "yes yes but I would prefer to be miserable about this." Apply the same overperformance to seats that are not normally 60+% Republican, and you can flip the house. The lesson here is only that suburban conservative districts where Trump won narrowly because people were turned off by his odiousness aren't necessarily places where people are going to vote for a Democrat for the first time in their lives, en masse. But this isn't the kind of place that cost Clinton the election.

I'm glad Josh is here to remind us that Trump is really bad

That's what I'm here for!

On the plus side he just barely got elected president, so that's encouraging!

he lost by 3 points

a party of Hillarys, barely losing/winning til Waterworld

Because the dems keep losing not just to total nothings, but totally bad candidates, including people charged with assaults the day before elections, or Trump, or whoever

....in districts that have been red for years.

Wtf it seems South Carolina was closer than Georgia. Is that correct?

― Frederik B,

less than 3000 votes!

Y'know, it's almost as if running leftist candidates and against the AHCA and broken populist economic promises of the Trump campaign is a better strategy than targeting white 'reluctant' Trump-voting small-b bigots... :)

Also, from what I saw on 538, South Carolina mainly close due to African-American turnout, right? Really makes you think...

Y'know, it's almost as if running leftist candidates and against the AHCA and broken populist economic promises of the Trump campaign is a better strategy than targeting white 'reluctant' Trump-voting small-b bigots... :)

It's true - the guy who did that totally swamped his opponent. Won by 10 points!

Oh, wait, you're just projecting that since the thing you don't like didn't work, the thing you totally wish would happen someday is all the more guaranteed to work. Got it.

even Jonah gets it:

In other words, in the realm of spin, appearances, and momentum, a Handel win is a huge victory for the White House. That realm is really important — more important than it should be, but really important nonetheless.

On the other hand, a Handel win is not anywhere near the victory/mandate/endorsement the Trump team will claim it to be. This is a Republican district. The only reason it was close: A lot of Republicans voted for a Democrat. So, the GOP victory on the merits is pretty limited. Spending enough money to scald a wet mule (to borrow a phrase from Haley Barbour) to hold on to a district that Tom Price (Trump’s HHS secretary) and Newt Gingrich held is not a sign of Republican health. I’m okay with calling that a moral victory for Ossoff, as the media certainly will. But a moral victory plus $1.89* will buy me a large coffee at my local Starbucks. Meanwhile, a literal defeat for the GOP would have been a disaster.

x-post: No, I'm looking at a bunch of different special elections, some of which had bigger swings towards the Democrats than others, and making a thesis based on that :)

also, I'd forgotten that Dems won seven straight special elections in 2009-10 until President Brown's vvictory.

fred not to over-states-splain but maybe re-watch the breakfast club and imagine assistant principal vernon is more or less your average white male binary-thinking trump voter. liberals to him are brian ralph johnson or john bender, no inbetween. hard to run too far to the left in districts where vernons are a major voting bloc

Meanwhile, a literal defeat for the GOP would have been a disaster.

exactly why I was rooting so hard for Ossoff. the GOP is going to continue to abandon all principles so they can follow Trump off a cliff as long as they keep winning elections, and the fact that they're 5-0 in these special elections is sending them a pretty clear message.

if they can do math, the clear message is "we're fucked" but i agree that that won't be the narrative they cast on TV.

The Republican voters in GA-6 and elsewhere aren't "Republicans" in the deep and secret core of their being. Even Limbaugh listeners. These are people who have been persuaded through right wing messaging to think certain things. They would vote for a Democrat if they were persuaded it would make their lives better.

All this moral panic about "appealing to bigots" is bizarre. No one is saying Democrats should appeal to voters on the basis of their bigotry--that market is cornered anyway. But they should emphasize, to all voters, that Republican policies are making their lives harder and worse and Democratic policies would be better for them.

pretty sure wealthy atlanta suburbanites vote republican because their policies are better for them. trump did worse there than romney because romney looked and acted more like their dream republican. three-car garages are people, my friend.

yup

They would vote for a Democrat if they were persuaded it would make their lives better.

I...don't think so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjF0wcBYAhg

All this moral panic about "appealing to bigots" is bizarre. No one is saying Democrats should appeal to voters on the basis of their bigotry--that market is cornered anyway. But they should emphasize, to all voters, that Republican policies are making their lives harder and worse and Democratic policies would be better for them.

On what possible basis are you making this judgment about a district that sent Newt Gingrich to the House for 20 years?

What's the matter with Georgia?

centuries of racial oppression

libertarianism

ted turner

peaches, come from a can

Is she a Chtulhu devotee too?
Or is that a figure of speech where she's from

Trump won this district by only 1.5%

thanks Morbz, I feel like piece of information is getting forgotten here. Ossoff underperformed Clinton, and there are a million possible explanations for that but it's a bummer no matter how you slice it.

he won by 3.6%

in an election where he lost the popular vote nationally

oh n/m relative to national popular vote
let me screen shot the worthwhile part of Nate's overly long analysis

Tom Price won it by 23% ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You have to be really, really selective to in any way see this as Ossoff 'underperforming' in any way.

Except that he underperformed compared to more leftist candidates in other districts. Which should make you think. One thing that seems a bit like a deja wu was the stories that suburban moms were going to sway the elections Ossoff's way. Which is a bit like the expectation that Clinton would win because she would run up the score with women. But white women ain't going to save the USA, I guess.

http://i.imgur.com/l5RzyuC.png

4.4% of cobb county voted for gary johnson and I would imagine many of them came home to vote for Handel. I imagine there were a lot of blank presidential ballots who voted for price that factored into this result as well.

the DailyKos chart i'm looking at sez Trump 48.3, Clinton 46.8; why can't facts be easily found

(in GA-6)

Something different happened in November. Many conservative voters chose Hillary Clinton for president. Donald Trump only won the district by 1.5 percentage points even as GOP District 6 incumbent Tom Price won by 24 points.

The reason for the ticket splitting likely lies in one key demographic.

The 6th District, which includes part of Atlanta and its affluent northern suburbs, is loaded with college graduates.

http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2017/02/28/all-about-the-georgia-6th-congressional-district-election/

its the same district that voted against MARTA cos it would bring "the wrong element" to their suburbs. now they have the baseball stadium so no reason to pretend the city proper even exists

morbs, i was looking at this: http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/georgia/

i saw that too, but how do you get from counties to districts for prez?

interesting ~

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a55768/why-ossoff-lost/

xp good q, haven't found anything that specific

Really good thread on the way forward.

You'll be very surprised that I believe this, but working-class history is an important part of progressive victory going forward

— gabrielwinant (@gabrielwinant) June 21, 2017

pages upon pages of tweets are an important part of progressive victory going forward

guys, the georgia-6 result was bad. no need to sugarcoat it. it's just one data point though, and the overall trend when you look at the other special elections seems good

please Tweet that to progressives, k3vin

K3vin K otm

*finishes drink*

k3vin is correct, I'm not gonna spend any more time thinking about this race

When presidents choose legislators for their Cabinet, they go to safe seats – can't stress this point enough.

so i think i saw (on twitter?) that there weren't any Ossoff commercials tying Handel to Trump? p weird if true...

meanwhile the GOP ties Ossoff to Islamic terrorism and the Scalise shooting. maybe something to think about if you're waging a referendum on <blank> campaign, Dems.

Dems the breaks!

so i think i saw (on twitter?) that there weren't any Ossoff commercials tying Handel to Trump? p weird if true...

There were plenty made by pacs and the DCCC, but all of his were very policy-centric and positive.

don't want to alienate anyone who voted for His Orangeness! they are precious snowflakes that can't handle guilt or regret

ah ok that makes sense. no TV so my exposure to the airwaves war was mostly in bars with the sound muted.

She called Ossoff "a San Francisco Democrat," which she would've called any opponent, so hey go authentic and left and see what happens.

guys a 30-year old jewish kid who just got his MA four years ago almost won a republican district so safe it was vacated for a cabinet position. time to panic!

can you even read

an 18-point swing from R to D in 7 months in a district that hasn't voted democrat since 1970 is a troubling data point, but not for the democRAT party

becomes a negative swing bcz Ossoff failed to use the winning message that Handel will be Trump's secret wetnurse.

his handler?

an 18-point swing from R to D in 7 months in a district that hasn't voted democrat since 1970 is a troubling data point, but not for the democRAT party

― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, June 21, 2017 4:14 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the clinton-trump margin was closer than this special election. that's a more valid comparator since the election was more or less a referendum on trump. popular incumbents like tom price often outperform the national races so it's not really fair to compare to that result

No, because the Clinton/Trump election was between Clinton and Trump, and Trump massively underperformed in this district versus its party ID/history, precisely because they wanted a Jeb!-type Republican and Trump being on the ballot was off-putting. No reason to assume that discomfort holds for a Congressional race - they still want Jeb!-type Republicans and conveniently enough, one was running. Is there any evidence that voters approached this as a "referendum on Trump?" Without that assumption, comparison to previous races for the same seat seems just common-sensical.

CLF the GOP SuperPac that crushed Ossoff is run in part by a Saudi lobbyist, not that Ossoff ever let voters know https://t.co/EcBMFcXQ8z

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) June 21, 2017

Like, just because the popular incumbent leaves doesn't mean the district gets reset to 50/50 or something. Looking at the races he won, and the fact that he *was* a popular incumbent, can tell us things about the district. Things like, "it's full of fucking Republicans."

it's been decades since a democrat has gotten more than 38% of the vote in GA 6. ossoff beat that by 10%

that's a more valid comparator since the election was more or less a referendum on trump

how true is this? is Handel a full-on red hatter or is she more a "normal" Republican? feel like the only true referendum on Trump is gonna come in 2020. most GOP voters are prepared to shake him of as an aberration when it's all said and done.

what people choose to compare ossoff's performance to seems to be strongly correlated with how they think the democrats should approach 2018

There is no difference between a "normal" Republican and a Trump Republican.

in the eyes of self-identified "reasonable" Republicans there is

Hate to find people getting complacent and thinking that it was bound to go the D way since the Rs are screwing things up so badly. Since low voter turn out contributed so heavily to November.
How was voter turn out in Georgia?
I saw something talking about 43% or thereabouts but that could have been April's election.

in the eyes of self-identified "reasonable" Republicans there is

― frogbs, Wednesday, June 21, 2017

which is why the message in 2018, "These people want your grandpa to die in six years when they're out of office."

? Turnout was huge for a special election.

xp

There is no difference between a "normal" Republican and a Trump Republican.

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 21, 2017 5:50 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree generally, in the sense of "'normal' Republicans basically decided Trump was not a deal-breaker so fuck them all, they all own this racist shitbag nightmare." But if we're trying to understand why this district votes the way it does, and, from there, what this election might portend for the wider picture, understanding what motivates Republicans in this district might be relevant.

At a certain point though what matters is, this district is full of Republicans and is thus not the kind of district the Democrats have to win if they're aiming to flip the house in 2018. It's a classic safe red seat - I cannot imagine anybody, before this campaign started, picking it even in like a top fifty of interesting, up-for-grabs races - and so the most interesting takeaway for me is that Ossoff did as well as he did.

I think most would say top fifty. The Clinton/Trump-margin was remarkably close, so something is happening.

Democratic candidates in these elections have won an average of 68 percent of the votes Hillary Clinton won in their districts, while Republican candidates have won an average of 54 percent of Trump's votes. That's an enthusiasm gap that big enough to gravely imperil the Republican majority next November.

http://cookpolitical.com/story/10391

"Remarkably close" only versus how that district has voted in Presidential elections before - which I agree is not insignificant! But a really sudden shift like that to me does not say "this district is changing, maybe it's not stuck being a solid red district" but "this district is still Republicans but had a problem with the specific candidate on the ticket." Which, along with the evidence from last night, does not suggest that they are primed to flip to a Democrat representing them in Congress.

This 538 chart is probably a good place to start:

https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/enten-special-11.png?quality=90&strip=info&w=575&ssl=1

Counting up the little boxes, okay, Georgia 6 is in the top 48 by this metric. So maybe I should have said "top forty?" I think the point stands - this isn't a case of a district absolutely primed for a pickup, where a failure to pick it up indicates everything is wrong. And again, it's only that far to the right on the chart because of that dramatic 2016 swing, so in a way the method is IMHO flawed as it may overemphasize Jeb!-type districts which may not, depending on your views, be the places most ripe for Dems in 2018.

There are other metrics you could bring in to consider the meaningfulness of that 2016 vote - like, how did all districts behave in that election? I haven't found a good chart that brings it all together and is sortable and indicates which party held the seat in Congress, but for example, there are twenty-three districts that elected Republican representatives (all incumbents) in 2016 while choosing Clinton for President, sometimes by huge margins - which is more striking than the one-point Trump victory in Georgia 6. If a special election happens in one of those and the Dems don't win then yeah there is something seriously seriously wrong.

and yes, qualmsey's link is also super helpful

greg palast also claims 40,000 ballots were "lost"

Ufot told me, "We submitted 86,419 voter registration forms. There are 46,000 of the folks that we've registered who have made it, and 40,000 of them are missing."

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/41009-greg-palast-jim-crow-scam-threatens-to-tip-georgia-s-ossoff-handel-race

dogg you gotta find some better sources to link to than palmerreport.com and truth-out.org

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

hey now, i don't link to palmer report (however much i might like to pretend is true)

No, because the Clinton/Trump election was between Clinton and Trump, and Trump massively underperformed in this district versus its party ID/history, precisely because they wanted a Jeb!-type Republican and Trump being on the ballot was off-putting. No reason to assume that discomfort holds for a Congressional race - they still want Jeb!-type Republicans and conveniently enough, one was running. Is there any evidence that voters approached this as a "referendum on Trump?" Without that assumption, comparison to previous races for the same seat seems just common-sensical.

― ﴿→ ☺ (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, June 21, 2017 4:49 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this doesn't really scan to me, and it seems like the smart election people worth paying attention to agree with me

although i haven't checked with sam wang, maybe bayes agrees with you lol

i mean you cannot compare an election between two virtual unknowns to one involving a longtime, popular incumbent. that to me seems much more common sensical

comparing to trump/hillary, i mean

and by smart election people i basically mean nate silver. i think if you trust a word any of these other jokers have to say after what we saw with the general election then i've got some swampland to sell you

what does Michael Moore say then?

Silver agrees with me though!

natesilver: Democrats have been competitive in four substantially red districts. We can debate what “red” means, because the districts are red in different ways. But they’re the sort of results you’d expect in an election where the House was in play. Heck, some of them are even consistent with the sort of results you’d expect in a massive wave election. (...)

micah: Wait a second, Nate. This was a red district, but it was also an eminently winnable race for Democrats. (...) They lost by 4 percentage points in a district Hillary Clinton lost by 1.5 points. I know other non-Trump Republicans have done better there, but if Democrats are hoping to ride dissatisfaction with Trump to the House majority, shouldn’t they be concerned they couldn’t do that in a district we know already doesn’t love Trump?

natesilver: Was Trump on the ballot last night? No. When we modeled the House in 2010, we used a combination of the presidential results in the last two presidential elections, plus the previous House result, plus a bunch of other factors.

Using the last presidential race is just a shorthand that works fine in most cases, but wasn’t particularly good here. And we have a great example of that, given what happened in South Carolina, which was literally the opposite of Georgia in many respects: historically a swingy district that went very pro-Trump. Democrats did quite well there.

(...) Certainly, we can debate the strategy in individual races. But basically it’s like if an obscure college football team goes and plays against Ohio State at Ohio Stadium, and loses 30-27 when they were big underdogs going in. It’s disappointing for them, but, at the same time, an indication that the team has bright things in its future and that Ohio State has a lot to worry about. (...) The official FiveThirtyEight pre-election spin was that Georgia 6 mattered more in perception than in reality. Which I think I still agree with. (...)

micah: Hmmm. I think Georgia 6 suggests that marginal Trump voters (whom we’ve dubbed Reluctant Trump voters) — i.e., people who voted for him but had an unfavorable view of him — are still generally with the GOP. That’s backed up by our survey data too. (...)

natesilver: But Micah, the relevant factor is that they were marginal Trump Republicans. If you had a district where you had marginal Trump independents or Democrats — you had a few of those in South Carolina 5 — the outcome might have been different.

(emphasis added)

huh, well i'm on micah's side then. on my phone now but silver's article from today seemed to show that ossoff (barely) underperformed expectations

I would like to know if Nate Silver thinks the Rockies and Diamondbacks are for real

acting like only if Ossoff was a candidate more suited to the preferences of people who would never in their lives choose to live in any part of a district like GA-6, i.e. pretty much all of ILX, then he could have won, is profoundly stupid and misses the point completely imo

So tired of the liberal half of the country looking for every opportunity to kick itself for not being good enough to ever deserve winning.

― El Tomboto

not everybody gets to live exactly where they choose!

I have my own spaceship

i was just going to steal andy griffith's

Ahem, that spaceship's mine, per the will