115th United States Congress

[Zetanio]

Welcome to politics, where everything is made and the votes don't matter.

[tyven]

Has shit all to do with this election but okay.

The presidential election was a huge fail for the dems, but that's unrelated.

quite related considering Ossoff ran the exact same campaign as hillary. "Trump is bad so vote for me while I do nothing to actually try and earn your vote cuz Trump is bad." Guess we should be relieved he didn't collapse from standing still for an hour in balmy weather

[Headspace]

quite related considering Ossoff ran the exact same campaign as hillary. "Trump is bad so vote for me while I do nothing to actually try and earn your vote cuz Trump is bad." Guess we should be relieved he didn't collapse from standing still for an hour in balmy weather

Don't sell him short. He ran on policies. Those policies were "Im against raising income tax on the rich" and "we should use Lyft Bus and defund MARTA". The centrist dream ticket.

[Gredival]

um no the RCP aggregate shows the last 4 polls as
Handel +2
Ossof +2
Ossoff +1
Tie

for an average Ossoff lead of 0.2%, a value that the average margin of error is 20 times greater than. the polling shows a statistical dead heat.

i lean towards Handel simply because this is still the same seat Tom Price won by 23 points in 2016. i know Trump is terribly unpopular and congressional midterms almost always trend toward the party out of power but i have a difficult time seeing Democrats picking up such a traditionally blood red seat, even with the amount of money they've thrown into it.

But how can we blame this on the establishment?

[tyven]

an affluent suburb of a major city should never be a heavy lift for dems not facing an incumbent. There's a reason they thought it was vulnerable compared to Kansas, North Dakota, and South Carolina yet somehow their message still isn't enough lol. This wasn't a district of rednecks

[Quicklet]

an affluent suburb of a major city should never be a heavy lift for dems not facing an incumbent.

Why shouldn't affluent people want to vote someone who's going to take money from those freeloading sick people and give them some juicy delicious tax breaks?

The system is fucked, and the only thing that's going to change it is for total institutional failure to happen (again) with Republicans having total control of federal government. And even then, it's only a 50/50 chance that things don't get worse because Republicans will somehow blame Democrats for their own failures.

[Gredival]

an affluent suburb of a major city should never be a heavy lift for dems not facing an incumbent. There's a reason they thought it was vulnerable compared to Kansas, North Dakota, and South Carolina yet somehow their message still isn't enough lol. This wasn't a district of rednecks

I lived in this district, before Trump I never would have thought there would be a gap lower than +7 R

[Fiye]

Can't wait to hear how black people didn't turn out.

[tyven]

I lived in this district, before Trump I never would have thought there would be a gap lower than +7 R

I'm not surprised when R's can win with a message of "I don't believe in a livable wage and my opponent is basically Nancy Pelosi".

[Tyrath]

I'm not surprised when R's can win with a message of "I don't believe in a livable wage and my opponent is basically Nancy Pelosi".

Didn't you say it was an affluent area? Why would they care about the livable wage? They got theirs.

[Gredival]

Didn't you say it was an affluent area? Why would they care about the livable wage? They got theirs.

Pretty much.

It's an Atlanta suburb, near what we would call midtown. You have middle age affluent white southerner families and college kids from Emory and Georgia Tech. However the ones attending Emory come from money and might not be registered locally. It's strong ground for business-establishment type Republicans. Not overtly racist enough to embrace Trump's messaging, but they care naught for justice economics.

[Aerin]

Dems lost in a blood red district, better call it for the Democratic party now. It was good while it lasted guys.

[Quicklet]

Dems lost in a blood red district, better call it for the Democratic party now. It was good while it lasted guys.

Ossoff winning might have spooked enough Republicans in Congress to kill off AHCA for good. I agree that this means almost nothing for 2018, but there are tangible short-term political consequences for Handel winning, most notably that AHCA is much more likely to be pushed through now.

[Zealot]

Are these candidates this tepid on their own, or does the DNC make them that way?

[Headspace]

Dems lost in a blood red district, better call it for the Democratic party now. It was good while it lasted guys.

The 2016 D congressional candidate was a nobody who spent like $1000 on his campaign

Ossoff has been campaigning since January, spent $30 million, and received only 5k more votes than that guy.

Only 45% turn out. Maybe if they ran on a progressive platform they could have gotten some of the disenfranchised left in the district to get out and vote. Instead of pandering to the centrists and moderate republicans they didn't get.

[Talint]

Well that's just silly speak. Democrats are only allowed to win where the wonks say they're supposed to. After all, the fifty state strategy was a massive failure.

[tyven]

Didn't you say it was an affluent area? Why would they care about the livable wage? They got theirs.

yes rich people hate poors. But dems win in cities and their suburbs. Not always, but a suburb should never been seen as some scary unwinnable district. Especially when the incumbent is gone. There is a reason they spent 30 million there. It was winnable. This wasn't a fucking backwoods town in Arkansas.

[Gredival]

Only 45% turn out. Maybe if they ran on a progressive platform they could have gotten some of the disenfranchised left in the district to get out and vote. Instead of pandering to the centrists and moderate republicans they didn't get.

Clearly veering hard left would have gotten swaths of disenfranchised people out to revolutionize politics the same way Bernie was able to mobilize the disenfranchised with his progressive platform en route to sweeping HRC out of the primary. It's not like the reason being against a livable wage wasn't a deal killer for Handel is that the district is full of people that like being able to pay their employees substandard wages.

Please continue to educate me about the demographics of a district I actually lived in, and why it's important that we "give people something" as if it's totally rational not to want to vote for avoiding catastrophe.

yes rich people hate poors. But dems win in cities and their suburbs. Not always, but a suburb should never been seen as some scary unwinnable district. Especially when the incumbent is gone. There is a reason they spent 30 million there. It was winnable. This wasn't a fucking backwoods town in Arkansas.

Suburbs are not a safe Dem zone, it depends on the suburb. This one was metropolitan enough that it was competitive, but do not conflate "potentially competitive" with "neutral ground."

This is the best take I've read on it:

the reason the party has lost all four special elections is glaringly simple. It is not some deep and fatal malady afflicting its messaging, platform, consultants, or ad spending allocation methods. Republicans have won the special elections because they’ve all been held in heavily Republican districts.

The special elections exist because Donald Trump appointed Republicans in Congress to his administration, carefully selecting ones whose vacancy would not give Democrats a potential opening. It feels like Democrats somehow can’t win, but that is entirely because every contest has been held on heavily Republican turf.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...&utm_medium=s1

[Kaslo]

Let's not forget Ossoff got killed on the issue of not living in the district in the last few days.

[EternityEnd]

yes rich people hate poors. But dems win in cities and their suburbs. Not always, but a suburb should never been seen as some scary unwinnable district. Especially when the incumbent is gone. There is a reason they spent 30 million there. It was winnable. This wasn't a fucking backwoods town in Arkansas.

It was only "winnable" insofar as the best they could whittle it down to was a toss-up. And he lost that. Could he have won? Potentially, but his results fell on the low side of the margin of error.

And to say that democrats have the advantage in suburbs is a little disingenuous. They have the advantage in very liberal metropolitan areas and college towns. White, wealthy suburban communities have little reason to vote D.

The 2016 D congressional candidate was a nobody who spent like $1000 on his campaign

Ossoff has been campaigning since January, spent $30 million, and received only 5k more votes than that guy.

Only 45% turn out. Maybe if they ran on a progressive platform they could have gotten some of the disenfranchised left in the district to get out and vote. Instead of pandering to the centrists and moderate republicans they didn't get.

I know you're not worth responding to, but meh. As I said earlier in the thread, this race was a poor choice to turn into a celebrity spectacle. The community's demographic heavily leans republican, so the drawn out campaign raised awareness about Ossoff in the wrong way -- putting the republicans on their guard. By comparison, if we look at the runoff results, where he had the element of surprise and republican complacency (much like SC-5 last night), he did far better.

And again, this community's demographic is deeply R for a reason. Doubling down on heavily liberal policies would have been much worse. What's the point? Who are you targeting with that? Yes, do it in areas where its message can reach affected people, but this is not one such area. White, affluent southerners do not want socialism, and there weren't enough "disenfranchised left" to flip it.

Do democrats need to move to that platform, generally? Maybe. Do they need to double down on it in every election? Absolutely not. It depends entirely on area's demographics and what they want.

Taking this into the 2018 midterms, I actually don't think there's much to apply from this particular election, and more from SC-5. The midterms will be spread out and numerous enough that no single one will be able to turned into such a behemoth and focused on. It's possible, with some lower key funding assistance, that that lets democratic sleeper candidates ala Parnell flip some surprising seats. But only if the DNC actually pays attention instead of throwing everything at one seat.