While pundits debate what the real importance of the Georgia special election was, one number puts the loss of Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff in a stunning perspective. They took a big shot Tuesday and lost, but the trend is clear. But, to quote Taylor Swift, they’re not out of the woods yet.
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Special elections aren’t necessarily good predictors of the following year’s congressional elections.
All four races took place on turf that favored the Republicans. There are many districts that will be a lot tougher for Republicans to hold than Georgia’s Sixth next November.
“I don’t think anyone who is truly left-of-center would be in a situation where they would have had a hard choice to make over Ossoff or Handel”, Owens said. Maybe it was just a function of the split in the GOP, the Romney Republicans vs. the Trump Team, and, absent Trump on the ballot, the Georgia district simply reverted to form.
“‘Karen, if you can win, it says to every 8-year-old girl that she can do it too, ‘” Handel recalled the girl telling her. And yet, they came close.
The Georgia race was seen by many as an early referendum on Trump. As of right now, nonpartisan Cook Political Report ranks some 70 House seats that could be more competitive than this suburban Atlanta district.
“In the previous election – the Republican candidate won by more than 20 points”. If that continues to be the case in 2018, Democrats’ task of winning back the majority just became much more hard.
As President Donald Trump celebrated Republican victories in two special congressional elections on Wednesday, one man who advised presidents from both parties warned the results “should be a wake-up call for Democrats” that Trump could be on his way to re-election in 2020. “And when you hear Republicans talk in the gym or running around the House floor, they say, you know, ‘Just keep going the way you’re going because we’re still using this, ‘” Ryan told CNN Wednesday night, referring to the GOP’s use of Pelosi as a bogeyman in its messaging.
But but but but. Or would the Republicans hold those seats, assuaging the concerns of a number of members of the party eyeing the 2018 midterms warily? Democrats, meanwhile, are beating Clinton’s numbers by substantial margins in most of these districts. She said she would have voted for the House Republican health care bill, though she sometimes misrepresented its provisions in debates with Ossoff. During the 2016 presidential election, the former host of “The Apprentice” pulled off many upsets, including turning Iowa from blue to red and picking up the state’s six electoral votes.
“So you want me to sing my praises, is that what you’re saying?” the California Democrat remarked dismissively to reporters when asked why she should stay on as leader. They have now three special elections in a row to fill seats vacated by President Trump’s Cabinet members.
Around the same time House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was declaring she had broad support to remain the top Democratic leader and jabbing back at her critics, a group of her colleagues met privately to brainstorm on whether there was a way to force her out.
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But Democrats have the ability to recover quickly from this. When she emerged as the de facto GOP nominee, I noted how her recent history of lackluster Senate and governor campaigns – not to mention her unceremonious exit from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation – would make her an attractive scapegoat if things went south for the GOP.
