Too much hype over special elections

Last week’s special election in Georgia to fill a vacant House seat got far too much attention as some people got excited over what they felt would be the beginning of the collapse of the Republican majority in Washington.

Both parties threw millions of dollars at the Georgia 6th House Congressional District race to fill the seat vacated by Health Secretary Tom Price. And prior to Tuesday’s vote, many were predicting it would be the beginning of the end of the Republican stronghold on the federal government and that the small race — it is just one of 435 House seats — was some kind of indicator of how the rest of the country feels. Again, they were wrong. Not only did Democrat Jon Ossoff lose the race — the fourth such special House election loss by Democrats since President Trump won the presidency in November, he lost the seat by a wider margin than Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton. Trump carried that district by 1 percentage point, while Republican Karen Handel won by more than 4 percentage points.

The fact here is it is too early to be trying to make these special elections some sort of a barometer of what the voting public thinks. It also demonstrates that political pundits who keep telling listeners — the few left listening — that voters are turning away from Republicans, are just as wrong as they were in November of 2016. You could make the argument that voters are leaning even more to Republicans than Democrats, except maybe here in California.

So, we need to let the political landscape play out and not get so caught up in special elections. And, voters need a break from politics as much as anything else.