Re: News Miscellany
Naturally, the hot takes regarding GA6 and SC5 (Republicans won both by about three-point margins) are already coming in. But a few things we need to remember:
1. Special elections are not representative of the country as a whole. Presidents almost always choose cabinet members from safe Congressional seats. A special election hasn’t been lost by the incumbent’s party in twenty-three years, IIRC.
2. Ossoff’s district, if my understanding is correct, has a Cook PVI of R+8. If we merely retake all the Republican seats with R+3 or less, it’s my understanding that we’ll retake the House with a fifteen-seat majority. There are 52 Republican seats with R+5 or less, and 71 with R+7 or less.
3. Here’s the electoral history of Ossoff’s district:
2002: R win by 59%
2004: R win by 100%
2006: R win by 45%
2008: R win by 37%
2010: R win by 99%
2012: R win by 29%
2014: R win by 32%
2016: R win by 24%
2017: R win by 04%
Not exactly good news for John McCain! Republicans.
4. Ossoff’s district is also Newt Gingrich’s old district. It had been reliably Republican for forty years. We forced Republicans to spend tens of millions of dollars defending it, and we came within a few points of winning it. That’s not a victory, but it’s not a complete debacle either.
5. It may be instructive to examine the case of Paul Hackett from 2005. He was an upstart Democrat running in a special election in Ohio, and the race received national attention. He came within a few points of winning, but ultimately lost. However, the Democrats still retook the House and Senate the next year. (To be fair, the parallels aren’t exact; the Senate map next year is horrible for us.)
6. Perhaps most importantly, these results indicate that we’re capable of setting up infrastructure on the ground and mounting fairly credible challenges in deeply hostile territory within a rather short time frame. The focus should be on resisting the AHCA, building campaigns on the ground, resisting voter suppression, getting people registered and driven to the polls, and so on.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
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