Lessons from Georgia<\/p>\n
John Ossoff lost the Georgia 6th<\/span> Congressional District last night. It was a tough sell: a District that had been Republican since 1979, and included Newt Gingrich and present Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price as the past two holders of the seat. It clearly was not a \u201cmoderate\u201d seat (Price, Gingrich were never considered \u201cmoderates\u201d) but it would seem if you spend $35 MILLION to win one Congressional seat in the first six months of the chaos called the Trump Administration, you ought to be able to pull it off.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t money. What are the lessons of Georgia 6th<\/span>?<\/p>\n First, in an uphill battle, it doesn\u2019t help that the candidate didn\u2019t live in the District. \u201cCarpetbagging\u201d is a very familiar term in the South. The “nice” name for Northerners who came down to the South to take advantage of the Reconstruction Era, it never has been a popular position for any candidate, anywhere. Even Evan Bayh, the veteran Senator from Indiana, failed in a bid to return to the Senate in 2016, when it became clear that he had spent most of the last six years in Washington, D.C rather than Indiana.<\/p>\n For a candidate to run with that near-fatal flaw in a traditionally right leaning and Republican District in the South, just seems to be like starting a car race with four flat tires. His opponent, Karen Handel, never let him, or the District, forget it.<\/p>\n This points to the first dramatic problem for the Democratic Party. From the Presidency on down, where are the candidates? The fact that clearly Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden \u00a0are keeping their hands in for the 2020 Presidential race, shows that there isn\u2019t a \u201cbench\u201d to draw from. Ohio is a dramatic example: beyond Senator Sherrod Brown there is NO state known office holder. While some mention Richard Cordray, former Ohio Attorney General and current Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; other statewide \u201ccontenders\u201d include \u201cfamily friendly\u201d show host Jerry Springer, former Governor Ted Strickland, 76 years old, and Mike Coleman, 62 year old former Mayor of Columbus.<\/p>\n Where are the young guns? Where are Ohio\u2019s John Ossoff\u2019s, where are the strong women and men who have ideas that appeal to Ohio\u2019s hard-working voters?<\/p>\n Which leads to the second problem: what is the message of the Democratic Party? Clearly the current message is that Trump is wrong (and Obama was right) and while that certainly appeals to the Democratic base, it requires more than just the base to win elections in Ohio and it will certainly require more to turn the House, Senate and Presidency around.<\/p>\n One lesson the actions of the Republicans from 2008 \u2013 2016 is that obstruction works. And while that may have been true for them, I hope that the Democratic party can do better than that. Clearly the message of the party has been compassion for the poor, minorities, and folks that have been disenfranchised. What is missing: the Democratic Party that also represented the needs of the \u201cworker.\u201d How did the party which was based in \u201cblue collar\u201d workers, allow them to get ripped away by a party committed to defending the wealthy? And more importantly, how can the Democratic Party reach back to those workers, as well as keep the \u201crainbow coalition\u201d (thanks Jesse Jackson) intact?<\/p>\n And, can the Democratic Party do that and still appeal to the highly educated white collar suburbs that have been gerrymandered into Congressional Districts?<\/p>\n What is required of the Democratic Party now? A message that is bigger than the current one: Obama was right, Trump shouldn\u2019t have won, and he needs to be removed. While I agree with all of those things, it won\u2019t win elections tomorrow. \u00a0We need to find new faces and support them (Duval Patrick where are you?) and we need to define a message that appeals to more than just our base.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"