President Trump on Wednesday urged Democrats to admit broad defeat and work with him on issues like healthcare and tax reform.
Reveling in his party’s win in a closely watched Georgia special election, President Trump on Wednesday urged Democrats to admit broad defeat and work with him on issues like healthcare and tax reform.
“Democrats would do much better as a party if they got together with Republicans on Health Care, Tax Cuts, Security. Obstruction doesn’t work!” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning, less than 12 hours after the GOP held onto a Georgia House district.
On Tuesday night, former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, a Republican, beat Democrat Jon Ossoff 52%-48%, dealing a disappointing setback for Democrats who had hoped for their first big electoral win of the Trump era.
The campaign was the most expensive in congressional history, with at least $40 million spent by the candidates and outside groups as Democrats looked to pull off an upset in a district that has been in Republican hands for 40 years but moved sharply toward battleground status last fall.
Handel beats Ossoff in hotly contested Georgia House election
The results indicate that while the Democratic base remains fired up, the Republican base isn’t depressed — and that Democrats can’t rely on their base’s excitement alone as they hope to put the House in play in 2018.
Republicans were jubilant over the results, and Trump himself spent two hours of the evening tweeting his congratulations repeatedly to Handel and to the Republican Party.
In the race, Ossoff, 30, had become a vessel for anti-Trump rage for liberals, raising almost $24 million combined for the all-party election in April and Tuesday night’s final showdown.
