I see that the Democrats lost the special House election in Georgia’s Sixth District is suburban Atlanta. Jon Ossoff, the rookie Democratic candidate, made a spirited bid against Karen Handel, his GOP opponent, and the polls were very tight right up to the last few days. But in the final day they started breaking for Handel, and she wound up winning by a comfortable 4 point margin (recall that Trump only won this district by 1.5 percentage points). Handel’s victory came despite the fact that a whole lot of money had poured into Ossoff’s campaign coffers from pro-Democrat groups nationwide. The Democrats had hoped that this race was going to foreshadow the end of GOP control of the House of Representatives, and the breaking of Trump’s popularity in the heartlands.<\/p>\n
I’m not going to offer a detailed, well-thought out analysis here. I’m just gonna shoot from the hip, like so much of what you see on social media (especially Twitter — what else is on Twitter but a lot of shooting from the hip?). OK, here’s my shot — the Democrats are just NOT LIKED anymore by too many people. For the most part, it’s not a matter of a particular candidate’s qualities. It’s not that a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren might do better with “working class” voters than Hillary Clinton did. And hey, Jon Ossoff himself talked about economic development and financial restraint in a way that conservatives in his district could appreciate. The problem is that a lot of people believe that the Democrats — all Democrats, not just a particular Democrat — are selling a general world view, a general philosophy that just turns these people off. <\/p>\n
Do you need a link to a thoughtful analysis that backs up my point? OK then, how about Thomas Edsall’s recent article in the NY Times “The Democratic Part Is In Worse Shape Than You Thought<\/a>” ? Edsall cites a whole lot of data and expert opinion in this article.<\/p>\n These anti-Democrat people are clearly not a majority of American voters. Hillary Clinton made that pretty obvious with her popular vote count. However, these folk happen to be geographically distributed in a way that favors the candidates that they happen to favor. Overall, I’d say that the Ossoff loss is a sign that the GOP is not going to lose the House or Senate in 2018, although they may have their margin shaved somewhat in the House. <\/p>\n The bottom line, IMHO, is that the Dems have much work to do, a great deal of re-thinking to do, in order to become nationally relevant once again. Yes, I will be the first to admit that some of the objections of the anti-Democrat legions are tinged with racism, misogyny and homophobia along with anti-immigrant and anti-Islam attitudes. The Dems are generally “on the side of the angels” regarding those issues. But as to seeing and addressing the underlying social concerns and economic problems which inspire such attitudes in the places where these people come from, the Dems are not doing a very good job. <\/p>\n If you follow the money, if you ask where the Dems get most of their funding these days, it generally points to well-educated elites who live in the major urban areas, often along the east or west coast. Very often these donors are involved in technology, international trade and media \/ popular entertainment; then throw in the last remnants of the unions, especially from the government sector (e.g. teachers unions). The Democrats are more dependent on rich people and well-off professionals than they once were (another Edsall article<\/a>). These people tolerate and even support the Democratic focus on identity groups and aren’t particularly threatened by more government involvement in society and the economy — so long as they have a say in what that government will or won’t focus on. They aren’t particularly threatened by higher taxes, so long as they can get the particular deductions and exemptions that they need. Open borders and unrestricted trade gives them the cheap products and unskilled workers that keep consumer prices low, along with access to the foreign computer programmers that their businesses need to flourish.<\/p>\n As such, the Dems have not put enough thought and energy into addressing the problems out in “Trumpland”. They don’t have much to propose to people in down-and-out places with shuttered factories other than to offer more welfare, i.e. more Social Security disability payments and subsidized healthcare. Sure, those things will help, but they don’t change the economic and social miasma that has enveloped too much of the nation. Trump has gone to these places and has given straight and direct prescriptions — less immigration, less foreign trade, more need to make stuff here in the states. And also that it’s OK to go to church and own guns and wave flags. Georgia’s Sixth District isn’t exactly mired in economic decay like Akron, Ohio, but they still perceive that the Dems don’t value what they value, and will use big government to make it harder for them to exercise those values (e.g. schools will teach their children to question what they believe in, including their America-first patriotism and their religious beliefs).<\/p>\n Trump’s prescriptions for these places may be a sham, they may well offer false hope — but they did bring attention to the people and places that the Democrats don’t raise much money from anymore. The Democrats don’t seem to be putting much thought or creativity into addressing and relating to the problems and concerns in those regions. (Obama helped transsexuals regarding bathroom access, but how much did he do for Walmart and fast food workers being ordered to work unpredictable hours on short notice?). And as a result, the people in those areas just don’t like Democrats anymore. I’m not optimistic that the Democrats are going to be able to remedy that anytime soon. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I see that the Democrats lost the special House election in Georgia’s Sixth District is suburban Atlanta. Jon Ossoff, the rookie Democratic candidate, made a spirited bid against Karen Handel, his GOP opponent, and the polls were very tight right up to the last few days. But in the final day they started breaking for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6737"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6743,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6737\/revisions\/6743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}