Dems First Opportunity to Seize Back Congress
via Richard Holt and natpolitics.com
The special election on Tuesday in Georgia’s sixth congressional district is the Democrats first opportunity to unify behind a single candidate after their disastrous failure to win the White House and seize back congress. Their ineptitude has left them so desperate to win that instead of looking to support seasoned political veterans from Georgia, they seemed to have just grabbed some guy from a DC office to lend support to.
Traditionally, the GA 6th is about a 70/30% GOP split but the hope is that the Dems can boost the vote because special elections tend to have low turnout. If they can motivate enough Dems to come out on April 18, they might be able to offset the traditional Republican voters who, most likely, won’t bother showing up. Driving the disconnect between Georgia voters and the special election are the inclusion of the 18 candidates in the top two primary.
This type of primary, the Top Two Primary, is a little unusual but is becoming more common for federal elections in the age of mail in ballots, gerrymandering districts, and liberal whining against party primaries in states that they can’t win. Thus far, Nebraska, California, Washington State, and Nebraska have instituted these primaries with Florida next on the radar for change. In the Top Two, all candidates appear on the ballot with their party affiliation by their names. The Top Two vote getters will move on to a general election to be held later in the year unless one of the candidates gets more than 50% of the vote. In this case, at least in Georgia, there will be no general and the election is over.
The Democrats are hoping to capitalize by uniting behind their inexperienced millennial, Jon Ossoff, with the hopes of exciting voters enough to outnumber republican voters on election day. This a challenging, and costly, effort. Hitting around 200,000 voters in the name of taking the fight to Trump in Washington may not play as well as they think. Their optimism is based on Trump only winning the district by about 1.5% despite the usual congressional 3 to 1 GOP split.
But have they put their eggs in the right basket? Running a candidate in a district in which he doesn’t reside is becoming the type of common situation perhaps voters are used to overlooking. Running a candidate who’s $8.3 million dollars from outside interests however makes Ossoff look more like a carpetbagger than a true Georgian looking after their interests. To make this particular candidate that much more interesting is his claims that he was a “Senior” National Security Advisor for his 5 years on the hill and that he had “top secret clearance”. Anyone I know with such clearance doesn’t advertise it because it’s like wearing a badge that says “Hey Terrorists- come to my house, I’m worth interrogating!”
Image via CNN
But maybe he’s on the same side as the terrorists. At least, that’s the question I’m asking while reading about how this Democrat Millennial had top secret clearance, and then created a media company to make “documentaries” for Al Jazeera. Don’t get me wrong, Al Jazeera (originally CNN Arabia), is a decent media outlet for Middle East news. It’s also good at delivering news from the region because they’re in bed with terrorists. Democrats are casual about going easy on terrorists by calling policies meant to protect our country from Islamofascism as “racist” (a go to term for white liberals to use who have no black staff members). It’s obviously going a bit far from being the party of Terrorist sympathizers to supporting a candidate who’s actually profited from the deaths of American soldiers.
On the republican side are a slew of candidates that have a usual enough conservative flare for a district like GA 6. The question is, will votes for these candidates split the vote enough for a 50% victory for the democrats? Just looking over campaign finance reports, David Abroms had a decent showing on the March 29 filing with a $101k raised from individuals while kicking in a loan of about $250k on his own. Bob Grey however has him beat with $217k and a $500k kick in from the candidate. To keep things getting pricier, Karen Handel managed to bring in $417,000 without the need of any loans. Handel made a name for herself in Georgia politics with her close gubernatorial run in 2010 that led to a runoff she barely lost.
Image via Politico
Judson Hill also has a great war chest with around $470,000 coming in from individuals and PAC’s ($62,000). PAC money is usually a good indicator of national support but in Hill’s case, it’s the $500 from Newt Gingrich that caught my attention. Hill also got money from the Family Research Council and even Hilton Worldwide. Despite this, its Handel who’s in the lead according to the polls and the republicans overall are looking to garner 52% of the vote which denies Ossoff the outright win.
Although the left is attempting to turn this campaign into a national referendum on the Trump administration, its unlikely their messaging will work. Unlike the typical mid-term elections, there just hasn’t been enough time yet from Trumps successes, or failures, to make it to the spotlight. As Trumps approval rating is still in the low 40’s, unchanged since taking office, the leftists will have to depend on continuing their childish #RESIST movement to pop-culture their way into gaining support from the under 35 demographic.
Republicans however have a strong base established in the district and the democrats there are rather conservative in their own right. Attacking Ossoff’s missteps in supporting terrorist organizations will make the sale a lot easier for democrat voters to pick a republican or stay home. Not only are the Dems trying to get enough new voters out, they have to contend with the voters they’ve got not really liking the chosen candidate.
Obama for America used a similar strategy of new voters, and it worked. Just in Ohio, OFA added 400,000 new voters to the register in 2008 which helped turn out the vote in my traditionally conservative state. The strategy is a go-to mark of success that Democrats and Republicans have been trying to replicate for campaign victories across the nation ever since. The loss of this race by the Democrats will simply echo the reality of their campaign: that it’s a blown up media sensation with no real chance of accomplishing anything at all. The rallying cry behind Ossoff is just another call into the wild for a leftist agenda that continually loses at the polls.
I just hope we continue to show the left just who the real owners of the country are because it sure as hell isn’t them.
Read more by The Fox
