GA-06 and SC-05 election day & results thread

[Mr. Smith]

So, we have a Haganing?

[Mr. Smith]

And I'm tuning out. I'll be back at 10 or so PST, I reckon the meltdown is gonna be real messy.

[Mr. Smith]

And I'm back early out of boredom.

Wow, this is baaaaad guys. Can't say I didn't see this coming, I just wish I didn't third-guess myself into being more generous towards him. It's always my penultimate guess that hits the mark the closest.

I'm with Bagel on this towards the trajectory.

[Mr. Smith]

I'm so glad we still have Dem posters here brow-beating the left about how "unrealistic" their chances are. Hey, you guys just spent over $20 million and lost to another Republican ghoul. Maybe give us a chance at the reins of power in the Dem party  and we'll do a better job than you at actually WINNING.

Your progressive in MT lost to a guy who literally assaulted a reporter in a race with less attention(and thus a higher special election advantage). He didn't have as much money, yes, but neither did his opponent.

Just leaving this here...

Clinton was toxic in MT, which is also more prone to electing downballot dems anyway. GA-06 was never supposed to be even competitive, and Handel never body-slammed a reporter.

Jfern, if every democrat who lost has lost because they're not left wing enough, why did Quist lose by 6 points?

Quist lost because as long as the leadership of the Democratic party has positions that contradict the positions of the candidates they run...they will never be seen as genuine or serious.

As long as Botox Pelosi is running the show...the Democratic party will never be taken serious, neither by half its own base and the rest of the American people.

Yes, I'm sure GA-06 would have just loved a berniecrat if only pseudo-neoliberals weren't kind of semi in charge of the democratic party, kinda.

Also

Botox Pelosi

Are you f**king serious?! I know you're a total piece of s**t, but really?

Said assault happened the night before the election, after most of the votes were made. Convenient little tid-bit there you missed. And he still moved the needle even more leftwards and was 2 points behind overall where margins are concerned, despite the lack of polish. Try again kiddo.

Pelosi is one of the representatives around my turf, I read her stuff in the papers when she has something to say, whatever she was in '06 and before is gone. Where she is now makes that a very apt statement. Just like by the end  of his term, Cranky Stark for Pete Stark, etc.

[Mr. Smith]

Ugh. This one stings. Really makes it feel like Democrats can't win no matter what they do. I think that one lesson to take away from this is that districts like GA-06 are not the "future" of the Democratic Party, and will be much harder for Democrats to win back than districts that are more working class. Clearly, the path to a majority in the House doesn't run through Republican districts that swung to Clinton. It runs through districts like IA-01, NY-19, and ME-02. And it's also obviously the case that flipping WI/MI/PA will be much easier for Democrats than flipping AZ/GA.

I don't recall the GOP taking this attitude that much in '09, and then they went after MA and Obama's Senate seat too.

GA-06 and flipping GA/AZ  simply should be used in the periphery, AFTER the rest is locked up.

[Mr. Smith]

Though on the bright side the dems have been secretly nailing star rural recruits in Ojeda,Gray, and Davis

Bingo. The thing none of the Democrats in this thread seem to want to acknowledge is that Ossoff, on the whole, had all the makings of a dud candidate, with all the weaknesses of Clinton ratcheted up and made even more transparent. Charisma and public appeal matter, as does running an actual campaign based on actual issues. Thompson and Parnell proved that, and Quist might have done had he not been a terrible candidate for totally unrelated reasons.

No, Ossoff definitely did great [especially with making a point to get small donations], the district was just an overrated shot and it was silly to think he'd gain the 2 points from when he initially lost by 2, AND that was under an in-fighting GOP. Ossoff needed to do better than great though to make it.

If anything, we had a mini Emmauel Macron vs Marine Le Pen going on, except Americans, especially Southern suburbans...just don't take things the way the French did (especially the Fillon voters who seem to be the rough equivalent)

[Mr. Smith]

The last candidate was a nobody with no money. So it's not really relevant. The Presidential numbers are more relevant, especially if you're using the fact that Hillary did so much better than Obama in this district to double down on the rich sunbelt district strategy. For $30 million, you could have done better than normal in many races, rather than just 1 that you still lost.

You lack basic understanding of Southern politics. It doesn't matter if it's a "nobody" or a well-known commodity: a literal dildo (D) and a legacy candidate (D) are going to generally be right alongside one another with respect to their shares of the vote in an identical race. This is a very inelastic area.

Ultimately, there are several independent dynamics at work here - along with the infrastructure of the Ossoff campaign - that lead to a significant over-performance for a candidate not seeking the Presidency. This is a big development for this part of the South, especially considering Ossoff got a higher percentage of the vote than Clinton or Obama (see what I did there?), and did so with a much-lower-than-presidential turnout that simultaneously exceeded that of a midterm.

So spending $30 million to lose a race in very inelastic area was a good idea?

Once an inelastic area flips, it stays flipped. Happened in Virginia in '08, happened on what's now called The Left Coast in the late '80's and early '90's.

[Mr. Smith]

People think moving further to the left will cause the Democrats to win. HA!

No, you make your message about the issues, not about how Trump sucks. Ossoff came across as a carpetbagging millennial who thinks Stephen Colbert is the funniest guy on Earth and made his campaign about how Trump sucks.

If the Democrats want to win, they should make their campaigns about the ISSUES and focus on what MATTERS, not the President's Twitter account. Moving further to the left just alienates much of the suburban vote and moderates in the party.  

Becoming the freaking Socialist Party reincarnate will give the GOP landslide after landslide in Congressional and even Presidential elections.

This.

The TEA Party had a message, the Democratic Party does not.

And they moved things unforgivably far-right and alienated a few moderates in the process.

[Mr. Smith]

Implying you can't both run a issues campaign AND have the solution to those issues be socialististic in nature.

Democrats need to come up with a comprehensive agenda/manifesto; with REAL detailed policies and not just empty platitudes like "bring back the jobs". Give people a signal that the Democrats learned something from 2016, instead of just hoping that people finally hate Trump enough to hand Congress over to Democrats.

There are millions of people in this country, especially young people and minorities, who are natural voters for the Democrats but will never bother to vote because the party does absof***inglutely nothing for them but still acts like they have a DUTY to vote Dem. Chase these votes instead of the votes of some rich assholes who moved his family into the suburbs the moment he saw a black family move onto the same street as him. These people are the worst in America, and they should stay in the GOP where they belong.

Exactly.

It's as dumb as the naysayers 40 years ago who didn't believe welfare gutters "chasing Goldwater" could actually win when Ford couldn't and Carter just won and Nixon went out. All it takes is one charismatic guy to say "there you go again" against a less charismatic opponent.

Or more recently, Scott Walker, Paul LePage, and Rick Snyder and even Tom Corbett all flipped blue states in 2010 with none of this moderation bs. Staunchly far-right and unapologetic and they won because they seemed to have the issues down according to voters. They fell rather quickly though in office and it took dog-whistling and incompetent counter campaigns running on similar ideas to Ossoff to get re-elected...well except for Tom Corbett, he got rightfully taken out.

[Mr. Smith]

Implying you can't both run a issues campaign AND have the solution to those issues be socialististic in nature.

Democrats need to come up with a comprehensive agenda/manifesto; with REAL detailed policies and not just empty platitudes like "bring back the jobs". Give people a signal that the Democrats learned something from 2016, instead of just hoping that people finally hate Trump enough to hand Congress over to Democrats.

There are millions of people in this country, especially young people and minorities, who are natural voters for the Democrats but will never bother to vote because the party does absof***inglutely nothing for them but still acts like they have a DUTY to vote Dem. Chase these votes instead of the votes of some rich assholes who moved his family into the suburbs the moment he saw a black family move onto the same street as him. These people are the worst in America, and they should stay in the GOP where they belong.

Exactly.

It's as dumb as the naysayers 40 years ago who didn't believe welfare gutters "chasing Goldwater" could actually win when Ford couldn't and Carter just won and Nixon went out. All it takes is one charismatic guy to say "there you go again" against a less charismatic opponent.

Or more recently, Scott Walker, Paul LePage, and Rick Snyder and even Tom Corbett all flipped blue states in 2010 with none of this moderation bs. Staunchly far-right and unapologetic and they won because they seemed to have the issues down according to voters. They fell rather quickly though in office and it took dog-whistling and incompetent counter campaigns running on similar ideas to Ossoff to get re-elected...well except for Tom Corbett, he got rightfully taken out.

Thats not true , by 1979 Reagan was the odds on favorite to win the Republican nomination

Also Reagan was the favorite in the general long before the debate: https://highered.nbclearn.com/portal/site/HigherEd/flatview?cuecard=3252



Who do the dems have that can be Reagan , I dont see anybody they have who can(either too old or no where near as charismatic to win the nomination)

Also remember Reagan came from the governors office not the senate. When you look at who the dems have at the governor bench who can be their Reagan, you cant find any body but Jerry Brown who is way too old to run in 2020.

I wasn't talking about Reagan specifically, though he plays a part. I was talking about the general direction the party started going after Carter won '76.

And the office from whence they come doesn't matter, it's the ideological drive and charisma that does.

[Mr. Smith]

Reagan was a drooling senile war criminal who traded arms for hostages and America's social safety net for tax cuts. So maybe we shouldn't aspire to that.

But that wasn't how the base saw him now was it?

[Mr. Smith]

Reagan was a drooling senile war criminal who traded arms for hostages and America's social safety net for tax cuts. So maybe we shouldn't aspire to that.

But that wasn't how the base saw him now was it?

So what do you think about my last reply and told why each of those candidates can't be the Dems Reagan

Reagan was a conservative who couldn't convince Northeasterners even with their snooty dislike of Carter, than he did.

As for Warren, Obama too was someone who shouldn't have had any clout with the WWC and lost them hard against Hillary in the primaries. Yet he beat McCain by the largest margin since '88 thanks to them, and he hammered Romney on issues they respond to. If Warren continues her focus on the big banks and castigating Trump for being like them, she has a chance.

Pochantas! You say? To that I say "Reagan's a Medicare gutter!"

The fact that Trump WANTS her and the far-right are trying to wreck her is telling as is.

[Mr. Smith]

Reagan was a drooling senile war criminal who traded arms for hostages and America's social safety net for tax cuts. So maybe we shouldn't aspire to that.

But that wasn't how the base saw him now was it?

He drove the republican party into the crazy ideological brain-dead party of taxes are hitler heil America party it is today. The democrats shouldn't aspire to nominate a charismatic senile old man who wrecks systems in a way that devastates the country due to his stupid sociopathy.

If said "stupid sociopathy" gets the taxes raised, Medicare for All passed, free tuition ala most of Europe,  then I don't see why not let it happen.

What were the men who freed the slaves but a worshipper of the political devil and a lawyer to tycoons who suspended habaeus corpus? Others decided to use Tea Party/Mitch McConnel-esque tactics to railroad his successor, who was just following the orders said man laid out because it wasn't radical enough?

What was the man who got the New Deal through but an egomaniac cripple with some racist tendencies

What was the man who got Civil Rights and Voting Rights out the door but an insecure, opportunistic, corrupt boogeyman who probably used a lot of ballot-stuffing to override one of the most iconic, clean, but low-key man in Texas and then bugged his opposition for the landslide?

Sorry sweetheart, but a little "stupid sociopathy" is very much a necessity. What is politics but a cutthroat endeavor?

[Mr. Smith]

So sick of the smug revisionism and, frankly, ignorance coming from liberals who claim that "before year XXXX, the GOP was alright and not crazy yet."  You all would have hated Eisenhower, just accept it.

I mean, I have very little love for Eisenhower, but I don't see how anyone can deny the GOP's lurch to the right.