Opinion

Another Swing And A Miss For Democrats

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Michael Hudome Michael J. Hudome is a Republican media consultant whose clients have included John McCain for President, all four national committees and several current and former members of the House and Senate.
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And the winner is…Atlanta’s television stations! One can only imagine giddy television executives poring over blueprints for new wings at the station. These lucky affiliates have joined WMUR TV, the ABC affiliate in Manchester, New Hampshire in the stratosphere of campaign receipts. Such are the fruits of the most expensive race in history for the United States House of Representatives.

Of course, the bigger peach out of Georgia today is a seat in Congress for Republican Karen Handel. The former Secretary of State survived a crowded field of more than a dozen opponents to force a runoff election with Democrat Jon Ossoff. The latter is the guy who nearly had the whole match sewn up during the special election falling just shy of 50%.

He was the prototype candidate Democrats craved. Not a career politician but a documentary filmmaker. A young guy who knew how to use social media. In a word, ‘cool’. A fiscal moderate who channeled Republican if needed. Their partisans hit the liberal leaning airwaves poised to make the argument that if they can make it there, they can make it anywhere. Not so.

Who are the Democrats trying to fool? They are now winless in the Trump era in special elections. There is no end in sight. They still have Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. Still have no self-identity in the era of Trump. These post Obama Democrats are a party of tactics and resistance, not ideas.

The Democrat plan to embarrass President Trump failed. The cost of this failure will be severe. Ossoff had no real excuse for losing this election. He was sailing in tail winds. Ossoff was running against a candidate with a president who had approval ratings well south of 50%.

True, it is the District the likes of Tom Price, Newt Gingrich and Johnny Isakson, Yet, Hillary Clinton lost the District by only one point in 2016.

The fundraising advantage for Ossoff was staggering. Since the race was whittled down to two here are the facts: Handel had about $2.5 million in campaign dollars in the shadow of John Ossoff with $7.5. million. Do the math yourself.

To be sure, there was outside spending on both sides. But a campaign dollar is worth roughly two times the value of that from an independent group. Ossoff had more muscle on that side as well. The campaign arms for both the Democrat and Republican parties roughly spent the same amount.

The AARP went all out for Ossoff on radio running anti-Handel ads on nine stations over the final two weeks of the election. Handel had no such back up. The Ossoff campaign sponsored traffic reports on urban radio in an effort to boost African American turnout.

Everyone, it seems, on the left went all out for Ossoff. But they failed. If the Democrats can’t win a race in which they received the lion’s share of over $50 million in a seat President Trump only won by a point then they are in trouble. Maybe a silver lining for Democrats is a better vegetable tray at the Atlanta TV stations before they are interviewed on the way to slaughter.