I attempt to dissect the election.
Jon Ossoff lost last night by 4.2%. Bashers of the Democratic Party are exulting in the fact that Hillary only lost the district by 1.5%. Republicans are exulting that the Democrats threw away over $20 million to lose an election.
Here's the another side of the story: Tom Price, the incumbent candidate the election was held to replace, after Trump appointed him to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. was elected with a 23% margin. Democrats would argue that Ossoff's campaign was a close one that forced the GOP to spend a record amount to defend, and that cutting incumbents margins by 19% can lead to massive victories in the 2018 elections. That nineteen point gain should be making GOP incumbents quaking in their boots.
Apparently, Ossoff started out more progressive. J oe Crowley, at DownWithTyranny blog said, "Ossoff started out as a progressive until the DCCC got their hands on him and turned him away from Medicare-for-All and away from a fairer tax system in their unending quest to force Democrats to sound more like moderate Republicans."
I've said before that the Democrats should do great in 2018 unless their stupidity undermines them. Clearly, that's a factor here. People always prefer the real thing and the Democratic establishment loves to offer up fake Republicans, disguised as moderate, centrist Democrats. Perhaps a sign of Democrats to support in primaries is to only support ones who refuse to bend to the demands of the DCCC or DSCC.
Greg Palast, shortly before the election, predicted an Ossoff loss because his opponent, Karen Handler, as Georgia Secretary of State, had engaged in sever voter suppression, using crosscheck and by no processing new voter registrations for thousands of South Korean voters who would have voted for Ossoff. It is crazy that Democrats, after Greg Palasts documentation, have failed to call for the banning of all electronic voting machines that allow votes that cannot be verifiably recounted.
Voter turn-out dropped about 20% for this election. That might be because less of the people who supported Price did not . show up. But the low turnout is also a bad sign for the Democrats. With all the money and attention to the election there was clearly a failure to wake up people who might have supported Ossoff. Progressives would argue that Ossoff used the same strategy that failed for Hillary, trying to get people to vote against Trump rather than for solid populist issues, like those mentioned earlier.
There's speculation that Ossoff will run again in the 2018 elections. I'm pretty certain that the money Ossoff raised, over 95% of it from outside the district, was not donated because people were thrilled with Ossoff. This was an opportunity to show the Republicans that they were in trouble, a way to dissuade them from passing a bill which replaces Obamacare with an abomination. If ever there's a district where a real progressive candidate is needed, it's Georgia's sixth. Between Our Revolution and Justice Democrats, it would be nice to see a real progressive run in the Democratic primary.