Special elections are practice, not bellwethers

by | Jun 21, 2017 | Congressional Races, Editor's Blog, National Politics, Politics | 28 comments

Republican Karen Handel defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff by four points in the most expensive US House race in history. In a lesser watched special election, Republican Ralph Norman beat Democrat Archie Parnell by only three points. The Georgia race embodied the hopes of Democrats and fears of Republicans while the South Carolina was virtually ignored because it wasn’t supposed to be close.

Democrats have a problem managing expectations. Liberal activists set a high bar, demanding a win to define success. Money and people from across the country poured into the suburbs of Atlanta to give Ossoff a boost. They bragged about low-dollar contributions, manpower and enthusiasm. They learned that the resistance only goes so far. In placing the spotlight on GA-06, they set off the alarm bells that rallied Republicans to give Handel the support she needed to hold onto the reliably Republican district.

In contrast, the South Carolina caught little attention. Parnell was a good candidate in a district that should have been safe for Republicans. Instead, he gave Norman a run for his money. Maybe Parnell did so well because he didn’t have so much attention. And maybe the Ossoff race wouldn’t have been much different if the whole country hadn’t been watching.

Beyond the hype, though, the trends are very good for Democrats. In every special election, they’ve been competing in districts long held by Republicans and in every election, the Democrats have outperformed. The biggest takeaway from the Georgia contest should be progressives’ commitment to supporting competitive races. Their low-dollar contributions and the boots-on-the-ground should be encouraging going into 2018.

To put things in perspective, Democrats won five special elections and lost none in 2009. In 2010, they lost in the largest wave since the 1930s. The special elections should be seen as practice, not bellwethers.

All that said, Democrats will need to be strategic to take back the House. They need strong candidates and while they should recruit everywhere, they need to spend their resources wisely. If these specials are showing Democrats anything, it’s that even with good candidates and enough resources, some districts are not winnable. More resources from Democrats probably wouldn’t have won South Carolina, Kansas or Montana because, as Georgia showed, Republicans can match the enthusiasm of the resistance with their base voters when they become alarmed.

28 Comments

  1. Scott

    The GOP is winning through intimidation & voter suppression. NC was the place where history was erased. Tactics of the turn of the century coup were just pulled out of a drawer and employed again.
    Greg Plasted went to George and got shoved around and predicted Ossoff would lose.

  2. Troy

    Labels. How nice we can compartmentalize and describe a span of views and beliefs in a word or two or 140 characters. I myself consider myself to be centrist. Unlike many of you, I do support gun ownership. Like many of you, I do support a women’s ability to choose, the ability of all people to marry whom they please, universal and affordable healthcare. A cogent foreign policy whereby we aren’t constantly sending members of our military for some abstract reason like ‘freedom’. I believe in a living wage, the ability to collectively bargain, that one does have a property rights interest in their means of subsistence. I believe the corporations are not people, that they are self interested faceless entities that use legislatures and Republicans to perpetuate their own selfish interests and goals; to the detriment of the people. At the moment, I don’t have a label for what those views are except to define myself as centrist.

    At the moment, I don’t have a problem with Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer. I had a major problem with Wasserman-Schultz. That said, can we win playing the game that the Republicans played to gain advantage? I’m not sure but I don’t think it will be successful. That game however is, “I’m against everything that Democrats say and stand for and I can take you back to a bygone era of White W.A.S.P.y dominance again.” In some morose rationalization, that somehow makes enough sense to people that they buy into it enough to vote for Republicans. Playing their game however is like playing chess; mirroring the moves of an opponent puts you at least one move behind every time. Having said that, I do believe that we, as Democrats, need to emphasize how bad Republican policies are for working people and in the same breath, communicate how we can make it better for people. Not corporations, not billionaires, not foreign nationals looking to invest, but people; our citizens and those who find themselves under the jurisdiction of this nation who want to make a better life for themselves and their families. To not just talk about the “American Dream” and then place an impenetrable but see through barrier between the them and the vision.

    An optimistic message to negate the constant and endless pessimism that permeates the discourse of our party today; that negativity is what fostered the party of ‘No’ which is not what we need to be. For everything wrong with what Republicans want and do, we can point that out along with how we can fix it to the betterment of people rather than just talking about what is wrong.

    If we formulate that plan and work on that positive message of what we Democrats can do to help people through positive rather than regressive governmental action, Donald Trump et seq will handle what is wrong with Republicans and their policies. That is why Mitch McConnell is in a hurry at the moment; he’s afraid Donald Trump will collapse before the Republican caucus can implement their policy of destruction of the people and enable the 1% and the corptocracy. No, I didn’t forget Russia and Putin. But let’s let Bob Mueller do his job and make damn sure he’s allowed to do it.

    People comprise institutions, not the other way around. It’s time the people become the important aspect of what we propose, what we talk about, and what policies we try to move forward are about. As Democrats, we need to embrace the ‘common’ people of this nation again. Not splinter groups, not special interests and niche causes. While there is a place for those folks as well, they need to stop being the banner under which the rest of the party is defined and labelled.

  3. Norma Munn

    Let me see if I read most of these posts correctly. The notion is that the Democrats must run moderates, not liberals, but most of you are also saying that no one has to be required to be ideologically pure. So exactly where do you want all the liberals to go, and to whom should they give their money and votes?

    As for Nancy Pelosi, enough of the blame game. If it were not her, it would be someone else. Most voters on both sides are ticked off about something, and prepared to vote AGAINST someone or something. You can remove Pelosi, but there will be another Democrat in office already (probably Schumer, after all he is also a New Yorker! which is tantamount to a sin in the eyes of some in this country).

    (1) For the record, I grew up in southern Georgia. Have relatives in that district and other places in the state. I did not expect Ossoff to win, and I was/am appalled at the money poured in by people who should have known better. (2) Jay is right about gerrymandering and voter suppression; Forgetting those facts and blaming the “liberals” is a sure way to keep losing since the Democrats are most certainly not going to win without those votes and money. (3) I am not a Chuck Schumer fan, despite his being my Senator for decades. (4) I don’t especially care for Nancy Pelosi either, but she has my respect. It was her backbone during the last few days of the run up to the ACA vote that made it pass, giving millions of Americans health insurance for the first time. Flawed as it is, there were lives saved from that, which is more than most of us will ever accomplish. (5) And some of us liberals are tired of being scapegoats every time a Democrat candidate loses.

    Yes, I am a liberal, and clearly fed up with being told that liberal views are the reason Democrats are losing everywhere. Being liberal has never made me unwilling to support moderates,such as Senator McCaskill to whom I send regular and early contributions each time she runs and have since her first campaign. Or Kay Hagen – both races; one of which was before I moved to Charlotte.. Or Bev Perdue. Or Maggie Hassan, Debbie Stabenow, Tammy Duckworth, Tammy Baldwin, and a number others including some other NC folks I will not name. It is not being liberal that makes some Democrats politically dumb; they were born that way.

    If Democrats choose to stay home or vote for a GOP candidate at this time because the Democrat is seemingly liberal, then given the reality of what is happening in the House and Senate, the least critical word I can use is myopic to describe them.

    • Smartysmom

      Norma, I think you are gratuitously misconstruing the comments about where on the political ideology scale candidates need to be and comments about DNC leadership being a problem. .Liberal is a term that encompasses a very wide range of political beliefs.

      • Thomas Hill

        Well said, Smartysmom and Rick.

    • rick gunter

      Norma,
      Thank you for your post. I am only saying that the Democratic Party needs everyone, even people who oppose abortion (Catholics and others) and who oppose gun measures. The big tent approach used by FDR carried the party for xix decades.
      As to Minority Leader Pelosi, I like and respect her. And yes, regardless of who is in that role, the GOP hate machine would trash them. But Pelosi has been so so many fights and is so toxic, I really believe it is time for a fresher face. It is unlikely to happen. But if the Democrats come up short in the midterms, Pelosi, after it is too late is gone. It is possible that by that time Trump will be so damaged by the investigations that even some of his base will turn against him, helping turn the midterms into a referendum on him. That would save Pelosi and the Democrats. But in the meantime, the GOP hate machine will hang her around virtually every Democratic candidate. There comes a time for a leader to go.

    • Jay Ligon

      The word “Liberal” has been made into a slur by the Hate Machine on the right – Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Fox, Hannity, Breitbart and Beck, to name some.

      However, when Americans are polled, the majority support liberal policies. Most Americans believe that employers should provide workers with overtime pay, weekends, vacations, pensions and medical insurance. These benefits were obtained by negotiation and, sometimes, confrontation by labor unions.

      Most people expect to receive Social Security benefits at retirement. They want public schools to be open and effective. Most people want the government to pave their streets, provide clean water and to dispose of sewage and garbage. The Commonwealth is not a new concept. Communities in the Old World and the New World believed in the notion of community.

      Rights of way provide straight roads and interstate highways. We protect each other though the common enterprise of National Defense. The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard are 100% government enterprises.

      The discussion about whether we will have government involvement in our lives is absurd. We have invited the government to keep us safe, clean our streets, educate our children and to provide roads from farms to the market. Without those conveniences, we would be a poor country in the Third World. When the right speaks of liberalism as a form of socialism, it is a lie.

      Our economy is a MIXED economy. Learn that word. The next time a politician (a government worker with a government pension and taxpayer- paid medical insurance) speaks of the encroachment of socialism, know that he or she is a complete fraud and an ignoramus. Our markets are freer than any industrialized nation on earth.

      Most of our economy is a free economy, a market economy. Not all markets operate as economic “Competition.”
      Competition, as defined by economists, is avoided by all businessmen in favor of monopolies, oligopolies or monopolistic competition. These are intermediate economic concepts which most politicians have never studied. They, therefore, have no idea what they are talking about when speaking of economics. They have false beliefs in free enterprise that a study of free markets would quickly dispel.

      Liberal policies have secured our banks, made our air and water cleaner, made our cars safer and more efficient, educated our children, given farmers and businesses roads to get people and products to market, provided our seniors with medical care in old age, provided some stability to workers and much much more.

      There is only one rub. These things cost all of us something in exchange. We are able to cross a river by means of a bridge that everyone paid-for. We are able to cross the United States on wide, safe, fast highways Americans bought. A progressive tax system costs those at the upper end of the income spectrum more. All of the fighting, complaining, bitching and sniveling about our government;s tax policies comes from a few people who have more money than they or 10 generations of their lazy, drug-addicted, entitled children could ever spend. They do not create jobs with that money. They are not job creators. They suck the economy dry and put their money in tax havens in offshore accounts.

      The notion that America will be a greater place once we pile more money on people who can never spend it is insanity but that is the case the Republicans make again and again. In the past 30 years, the amount of money piled onto the top 1/10 of 1% is incredible. We have piled a mountain of wealth on 1000 people. If that has not worked, more will not help. The notion that the United States would be better off if every poor person had no medical coverage or senior citizens had no medical care or social security flies in the face of economics, logic, and morality.

      We were able to defeat the Nazis, the Communists, and Islamic terrorists because we Americans agreed to do so in the common interest. Today, we have a class of people, not millionaires or multi-millionaires, but billionaires, the few who have taken the greatest advantage of our courts, our educated workers, our free markets and our universities, our patent protections, our copyright protections, our safe shores and secure banks. They have bathed in the bounty that liberal policies provided.

      They now conspire to poison the notion of a common good, a mutual enterprise, a common defense. They owe nothing for our roads. They owe their workers nothing. They want to get rid of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. They want to turn our Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard over to private contractors, for a nice profit. They want our people in jails to be housed in for-profit facilities. They want to eliminate the regulators so that they can break the law without consequence and to take control of our legislatures so that they can eliminate the laws that forbid their anti-social activity. They want to pollute our air and streams. They would sell off Yosemite or turn the wilderness into condominiums or oil wells.

      They do not support public schools because they can afford private schools. They do not need Social Security because they are billionaires. They do not care about medical care because they can afford any doctor anywhere in the world. That you cannot afford medicine is your problem. If the surplus population must die, then do so.

      The word “liberal” has become as an epithet, and the right has redefined the term into a lie, a cartoon and a putrid tool of propaganda.

      People want liberal policies. They squirm when they hear the word because the billionaires have pounded the airwaves with a message of hate for so long, people have no idea what it means anymore.

      They have poisoned the well that supported the Commonwealth. Understanding takes study. Hate is easy.

      • Norma Munn

        Very much on point and accurate. Thanks.

      • Troy

        I’m in total agreement and not a politically correct phrase in that entire piece. Where are the proles who abhor PC and focus only on plain talk; because it was just levied.

      • Donna

        I’m going to post your comments on my FB page…will credit you. Well said.

  4. Christopher Lizak

    I would point out that what you are observing is the fact that people are not really voting FOR a given candidate, but AGAINST the “opposing team”. Not even against the POLICIES of the opposing team, but against the other team existentially. Democrats are giving lots of money to these windmill-jousts as a way to show their opposition to the cartoon character Trump. Republicans are voting against out-of-state money and the cartoon character Latte Limousine Liberal. It was Trump vs. Pelosi.

    The actual candidates and their policies (or lack thereof) seem secondary to the narrative.

    • Thomas Hill

      I agree. A big problem in Georgia was the image of ultra-liberalism that Pelosi presents. Unhappily, Ossoff fits right into the image of a weak liberal person. The Democratic campaign money should have gone to the South Carolina race where a moderate with a good image was running against a right-wing extremist who announced his intention to join the stupid Freedom Caucus. The persons who made the spending decision at the national level are the ones who should be looking for new jobs. I tend to believe that the main culprit is the chairman of the DNC.

      • rick gunter

        Mr. Hill:
        I agree up to a point. I believe, however, that the South Carolina race was under the radar and attracted virtually no national attention until after the vote was tallied. I would argue that had it been a prominent race before the vote and had drawn lots of outside-the-district contributions that the GOP hate machine would have gone after the Democrat just as it did in the Georgia-06 race. I would bet that some of those Georgians resented the outside “agitation” that their race attracted. Both races were the Republicans to lose. On one hand, that reality tempers my anger that the Democrats failed to win any special elections this year that all were held in very red states. On the other hand, failure to win just one of the seats should remind Democrats that flipping the U.S. House in 2018 is hardly a done deal. The party needs at least these three things: 1. A coherent economic message. 2. Acceptance of candidates who are not necessarily ideologically “pure.” 3. Nancy Pelosi to step aside by January as House leader. 4. A possible shakeup in the DNC, which is too liberal for many Republicans and swing voters to stomach.

        • Thomas Hill

          I cannot argue with your “under the radar” argument. But what would be wrong with simply sending good candidates some money? Most moderate candidates are starved for funds, and the DNC does not send them a penny. I completely agree with your final points. I hope that you are active in your local party, as I am. Unfortunately, many of our fellow Demos remain in denial.

    • Jay Ligon

      That is so true, Christopher. Few of us are happy about every item on the Democratic agenda, but if every item on the Republican checklist were to become law, the United States, as we know it, would no longer exist. The North Carolina General Assembly, under the Republicans, defies the Constitution and fights the Founding Fathers and Supreme Court every step of the way.

  5. Marc

    But… I thought yesterday, everyone was saying that these elections were a “Referendum on the Administration”…

    That appears to have suddenly changed, for some reason, to “Practice” and “not Bellwether”…

    This very expensive referendum must have come out the wrong way… or is there something I’m missing?

  6. Smartysmom

    I just subscribed to the Spartanburg daily paper (because I needed newsprint for garden mulch). Their front page is associated press. Their editorials are southern. The content was all about how wonderful republican and Trump policies but totally lacking rational explanations of why they were wonderful. They were all basically rehashes of the hoary republican talking points that have no backing in what really happened. I’m convinced that people in the south, and maybe all over the country, are living in a fairy tale that has been spun for them by whom ever is producing this tripe. Reminds me of how Great Britain was talked into Brexit with lies aimed at their fears and anxieties. Then I have to wonder why people want to provoke such destructive behavior which 2 or 3 levels of consequences is guaranteed catastrophe, and I can only think it is because they enjoy blowing things up the way an arsonist enjoys watching fires. How sad.

  7. RICK GUNTER

    One more comment.
    The Democrats really need a political version of football coach Bruce Arians. He tells his Arizona Cardinals at the beginning of every season, “Our goal is not to play in the Super Bowl. It is to win the Super Bowl!”
    The Democrats’ goal should not be to be competitive in congressional elections. It is to win congressional elections. As someone on here commented, this is not horse shoes. Being close does not count.

  8. merrill

    i disagree with your conclusion Thomas. The Dems (or some other party) need a message speaks to the few middle of the road GOP and unaffiliated voters.

    I think the results of the special elections (with Trump doing his best to step on it daily) speak volumes as to the weakness of the Democratic platform and messaging.

  9. Bob

    Until you get blue butts in Congressional seats, nothing else matters. This ain’t horseshoes. Close doesn’t count.

  10. Thomas Hill

    I agree with Mr. Gunter’s comments, and will add that the DNC (even revised) never learns. Here are two comments in an article from the Post and Courier: “Parnell, who also worked as an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice in the 1970s, ran as a moderate Democrat who focused on fixing the Affordable Care Act and changing the country’s tax code to stop corporations from sheltering profits in other countries”, and “South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Trav Robertson said that had the 5th District race gotten a ‘scintilla’ of the national money and attention as the race in Georgia, things would have gone differently for Parnell.” We must run moderates, not liberals, if we hope to win any seats in centrist districts, and we need to fire DNC officials who bust the bank in support of liberals, such as happened in the race by Stephen Colbert’s sister against Mark Sanford a few years ago. She was done when she came out in strong support of gay marriage, and that is a fact — like it or not.

  11. RICK GUNTER

    Thank you for this column, Thomas Mills. As a Virginia Democrat and a former Tar Heel Democrat, I watched the Georgia race intensely. I did not believe Democrats, no matter how much money they spent against Karen Handel, would prevail. I still maintain, too, that Mr. Ossoff’s not living in the district was a negative for the Democrats. He also was in a box. He could not rail much against Trump because there are so many Republicans in the district, especially in Cobb County. As you indicate, the Democrats again set themselves up for over-the-top expectations, thinking they could win because Trump had only won the district by something like 1 percentage point last year.
    Two other points, if I might:
    Democrats cannot make a comeback simply by being against Trump. We saw this in the Hillary Clinton campaign. We saw it in Georgia 06.
    Second, it is time for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to step down. I love her and believe she is a great public official. But she also is incredibly divisive. I would acknowledge that the GOP hate machine would make John the Baptist look like the devil. But Leader Pelosi simply turns off voters who might be willing to vote Democratic. It is time for a new congressional face, but I don’t think it will happen and Democrats will continue losing elections, including some that they should win.

    • Jay Ligon

      Well said.

      • Rick gunter

        Thanks.

    • smartysmom

      I remember too well the beginning of Obama’s and the democrat’s first term in power when everyone was on their side and they had a small window of opportunity with widespread popular support. Pelosi squandered most of that engaged in an internal democrat power struggle. She won but it cost big time. Because of that I’ve always thought she was toxic. She is certainly a good target for distrust. Her being gone would certainly be a help

      • RICK GUNTER

        Life is pretty unfair. Here we have a president of the United States who committed obstruction of justice, who violates the Constitution’s emoluments clause daily and who very well have committed treason, yet some of us want House Minority Leader to step aside. I want Trump impeached, but Pelosi should step down and give the party at least the appreance of a fresh face. I don’t expect Pelosi to go until it is way too late, as following Democratic losses in the midterms. But I believe Republicans are playing with fire by clinging to Trump. He truly is toxic.

        • Smartydmom

          I agree Rick that Trump is toxic. But his following, and it is a large one, don’t care. In fact, being toxic is how he got elected, so it would appear “they” want a toxic leader. So maybe democrats should admit that and instead of calling them names like basket of deplorables,, dissing them as it were, they should figure out what those people want and figure out how to give it to them without alienating their existing supporters like us! (is that too many antecedentless pronouns to be coherent?)

          p.s Smarty is my pony

  12. Jay Ligon

    The structural advantage of redistricting (strategic gerrymandering) and voter suppression will give Republicans the edge in every close race. The past is prologue, and a Republican vote is worth about 10% more than votes by Democrats. Each Democratic’s vote counts as less than 1 vote, in effect.

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