I dunno. The 2016 election in this district was Trump 48-Hillary 47. Tom Price had a much larger advantage in 2016 as a 6-term incumbent, but given those raw presidential vote totals and a new field of challengers, you can't take Trump's insane unpopularity and improve on Hillary's total by 3 ****ing percent to prevent the runoff and win outright, even with a huge funding advantage?

What "clear accomplishment" happened tonight? I don't think I see it.

Ossoff is a no name, and he's not running against Donald Trump. He's running against a composite R. Remember that Romney won by 20 points.

Also, any improvement on a Dem Presidential margin has to be at least a minor victory. Don't we suck at these things generally?

you're comparing apples to oranges here silly. This district going back decades had been won by Rs by 60%+ for this congressional seat. obv this is a tremendous achievement. R turnout is much bigger in these midterm type elections which is why you cant compare raw Hillary/Dumpty numbers and need to compare to the fact that Price had been driving this home for Rs in the 60s consistently

it's not a trump district, but it's a newt district, which is basically the same thing so I don't get the % disparity but w/e.

Beating hillary's #'s by 1% or so with all that money blown vs what just happened in KS isn't a good sign; but from what I can tell the R candidate in Handel isn't a trumper/they were painting her as the establishment. A 1% R not turning out for her as a result could be enough. Gonna be an interesting race for sure, can ossoff get all those votes back out there again in june + those .9% stragglers vs the last sentence and ofc R's not showing up in droves.

Dems probably spent the $ wad on the first go around though--R's surely gonna come back $$ wise in the runoff but ossoff just needs enough $ to remind them he exists in the meantime. They don't necessarily need to blow wads now, everyone has to know who he is there by now.

Everyone was overrating Ossoff chances to win outright, and now you are underrating his chances in a runoff. The turnout was much higher than expected tonight. I think the D/anti Trump vote will again turnout in June. We will see if the Rs can maintain their turnout.

That's like saying that Scott Brown wasn't running against Barack Obama. He was, and he won, in a tougher environment than Democrats had in GA-06.

Err, I have no idea who that is, and asserting something is true doesn't make it so.

ETA: Just looked up Brown. So this GOP guy won a special election in 2010, and then lost in a presidential year 2012 by 8 points. And this is your evidence that Ossoff should have won? lol.

He's a Republican who famously won the 2010 special Senate election in ****ing Massachusetts to replace Ted Kennedy, which I think was when Democrats officially lost their filibuster-proof majority.

Compare the numbers and tell me Scott Brown had an easier path to a Senate seat in MA than Jon Ossoff had to 50% in GA-06.

It's far from apples to apples. I wouldnt judge it without actually being in the moment and familiar with all the details, which I have little interest in investigating. If your point is, maybe if Ossoff was better, he could have gotten more votes and won like this guy did, well okay. But in every measured sense, Ossoff overperformed here.

Don't really have any input into if this result is a good/bad sign, or if the effort/$ was worth it, etc and if any of this will even have much bearing in the way things play out in the grand scheme of things.

My only input really is that Ossof is about a 2/10 across the board on the genuine/personable/inspiring scale and his speech tonight was nauseating to listen to, so the defeat tonight at least didn't sting nearly as much as it would have if the guy was an actual charismatic and genuine progressive and lost.

Still a bummer as it would have been a nice upset, and I do agree with m_reed in thinking that he is still fairly live to win the runoff.

48.1% was his official #.

.9% ish voted other dems.

Lots of if's and all that, but he's not far off and it's in June so who knows how things end up by then, people could get indicted, trump could really **** something up by then and all that jazz.

You sure do a lot of popping off to people who know what they're talking about for a guy unaware of the Scott Brown election, embarrassing, sad.




Coakley ran a terrible/non campaign, that helped a ton.


I didn't follow this thing too closely but if Dan says Assof isn't a genuine progressive that's good enough for me. Chalk another one up for the G O P

problem is ossoff still lost this race to republicans by > 4k votes, despite raising over $8 million(!) and having every possible dnc resource at his disposal. just more proof (as if we needed any more) that voters don't want to be sold a generic message wrapped around a giant chest full of money.

the democrats best chance to steal a seat so far was in kansas. there was less than $800k involved in that entire race, and james thompson, the bernie-democrat, managed to earn 46% of the vote despite the dnc denying him any sort of funding or support.

Why didn't they run a Bernie democrat in the 6?

Ossoff emerged early when he was endorsed by the DailyKos, and energy and support coalesced around him. He was the best person for the job in that district at this time.

its anecdotal, but living in the area (though in John Lewis' district) I don't think this would have worked as well as Ossoff.

Good thing is the runoff race isn't till June. Plenty of time for a couple indictments/end of the world.

I dunno, I think last night is a pretty good refutation of this "the Kansas seat was winnable!!!" theory. All that money didn't appear to buy Jon Ossoff seven points.

I take two things from this:

1. The Democratic Party has learned almost nothing from 2016's calamity, but has somehow augmented its ongoing impotence by taking to heart the maxim that Near Success is Success Even When It's Abject Failure.

2. The Democratic Party has also apparently decided that the performance art of locating undesirable candidates, plowing money into their campaigns, and predictably losing, is not only viable politics but excellent optics.

Enthused with all of this, seems great. . .

lol

That's one reason Ossoff has to really get his message out there these next two months. He seems like a good dude who has certainly gotten out there and worked hard in his short career, but he has so far come off as quite bland, just saying the usual "I'll work for you," and "I'll help clean up Washington."

He needs to give people a reason to be excited about him, a reason to vote for HIM, not just the "D" after his name.

Man that's a brutal quote from Sanders. It doesn't fit enough with GOP messaging for them to officially incorporate it, but expect it to show up constantly on Reddit and other places trolls and astroturfers congregate.

bernie isn't a democrat, not that it'll matter to majority of people.

The whole bernie perez thing seems to be both using the other for their own interests (perez trying to get bernie bros to vote Dem/bernie trying to get D's on his platform) crap. Bernie mostly bashes the dem party and refuses to join it. Think bernie's gonna win this battle and lol dems.

He makes endorsements though, which is why his studied ignorance of a dude dems just dropped 8M on feels so crushing.

ossoff is supported by the establishment wing but I can't recall bernie doing anything for KS either and that guy was running on his platform more or less.

People aren't gonna believe those two are united and working together when the bernie bro runner in KS gets nothing (even if there really was about no shot of winning that) vs the establishment candidate getting all the $ in GA. All either had to do was make a symbolic gesture but not even that. If they did, they'd easily win the house in 18, but who knows now especially with all the new voter suppression that Sessions is gonna try to do.

It's like what trump says vs everyone else to the world on the world stage--none of them believe the everybody else.