Democrats completely wasted their time in Georgia

Here's the real lesson of the Democrats' foolish GA-06 crusade

Jon Ossoff
(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The news that Democrat Jon Ossoff decisively lost his race for Georgia's 6th House district is devastating for Democrats — but not for the reasons you think. That lone seat, now set to be occupied by Republican Karen Handel, is unlikely to affect voting for TrumpCare, or really for any piece of noxious legislation that drifts out of the GOP caucus like a cloud of poison gas over a battlefield. The real problem is that Democrats seem not to have learned the lessons of the recent past and are still prioritizing national races over more winnable and consequential contests elsewhere.

Democrats thought they could strike a symbolic blow against Trump and the Republicans in Georgia, and you can hardly blame them given the polling. There's nothing wrong with moral victories, but their value does depend on the price. The race for Georgia's 6th district was the most expensive in the entire history of the House of Representatives. The winner only gets to keep the seat for 17 months, until the whole chamber is put up for election again in November 2018. Even if he had won on Tuesday, Ossoff would have been no better than a 50-50 bet for re-election next year. Nate Silver argued that losing the race might convince Republicans to move against the American Health Care Act, but this is dubious. A two-to-one polling margin against the bill has yet to convince anyone in the party to slow the runaway train yet. It's hard to believe a single loss in Georgia would have done so.

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David Faris

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.