“Something ain’t working for the Democrats”

Poor Democrats – it seems they just can’t close the deal with the voters, said Rick Moran on American Thinker (El Cerrito, California). Since the “hated Trump” took office, the US has had four contested special congressional elections [equivalent to UK by-elections]. And in each case, “the Left has predicted victory”, assuming ordinary Americans share their loathing for the president. But they keep losing. Their defeat last week in Georgia’s Sixth District must have stung particularly badly. It had seemed as if their 30-year-old candidate, Jon Ossoff, would benefit from an upsurge in liberal sentiment in reaction to the Trump presidency. The prospect of landing a blow against Trump had made the race the focus of national attention, and it became the most expensive such race in history, with candidates and outside groups spending $56m. Yet, once again, reality “intruded on liberals’ fantasies”. They still haven’t grasped that, while some people hate Trump, “more people hate them”.

The Georgia result has prompted much soul-searching on the left, said Jonathan Chait in New York magazine. “Let’s be clear: something ain’t working for Democrats,” is the cry from party insiders. But liberals shouldn’t be downcast. The reason they’ve lost four special elections in a row is not because their party is suffering some “deep and fatal malady”. It’s because the contests have all been held in heavily Republican districts. These particular elections only occurred in the first place because, when appointing congressmen to his administration, Trump only selected “ones whose vacancy would not give Democrats a potential opening”. In such circumstances, Ossoff did well to come as close as he did. Sure, it was a creditable performance, said Josh Kraushaar in National Journal (Washington DC). But then again, the road to actually winning the House has to pass “through Republican-friendly affluent suburbs just like Georgia’s Sixth”. To get that majority in next year’s midterm elections, Democrats need a “political tsunami” as big as the one the Republicans pulled off in the 2010 midterms. As it is, they appear to be on track for no more than a “Category 2 storm”.

Georgia has made one thing clear: the GOP is “Trump’s party now”, said David Frum in The Atlantic (Washington DC). He may be swamped in scandals and stuck with a sub-40 approval rating, but “a more-or-less standard-issue Republican” still triumphed in the kind of well-heeled district that was supposed to be at risk in the Trump era. The distinctions and tensions between the GOP’S “country club, Tea Party and Trumpist factions” are fading. Offered a “safe and limited way to distance themselves” from the president and his agenda, the Republicans of Georgia’s Sixth rejected it. “He is theirs; they are his.”