One takeaway: Republicans aren’t necessarily doomed by Trump’s unpopularity in highly affluent, suburban districts where he struggled in the presidential election.
After what seems like a years-long campaign and tens of millions of dollars spent on a special election that both national parties eyed as a hugely symbolic one, Republican Karen Handel emerged from the Georgia special election Tuesday night with a larger-than-expected, four-point victory.
The result set off a round of gloating from Republicans – up to and including those with the surname “Trump” – and some serious teeth-gnashing among Democrats, who were clearly and publicly frustrated by their inability to win a race despite a firm belief that Trump’s unpopularity is their ticket to winning elections.
Drawing those big, national conclusions from one out of 435 congressional districts – especially one that I argued Tuesday is highly unique in the Age of Trump – is always a fraught exercise. But here are some things we can say after Tuesday night, in the form of winners and losers.
In the end, it was a bad and expensive bet. They tried hard and lost, and Republicans tried hard and won, period. And it reinforces the idea that Republicans in such districts – i.e., highly affluent, suburban ones where Trump struggled – aren’ t necessarily doomed by Trump’s unpopularity. We saw that in the 2016 election, when Republicans kept winning these districts in spite of Trump. If that continues to be the case in 2018,Democrats’ task of winning back the majority just became much more difficult.
But it’s also true that Democrats went big in Georgia, and they couldn’ t put it together. They had nine weeks after the primary to get from 49 percent of the vote that day to 50 percent-plus-one on Tuesday, and they didn’ t do it. For a party still smarting from somehow losing a 2016 presidential race that was well within their grasp, they have to feel the need to do some soul-searching and figure out why their strategies aren’ t resulting in actual wins. Commence blood-letting.
Mostly, that’s come in the form of incumbent senators perhaps not really living in their home states – see: Richard Lugar, Pat Roberts and Mary Landrieu – but we’ ve also got Scott Brown’s ill-fated attempt to cross the border and win in New Hampshire (he wound up being a rare GOP loser in a toss-up race in a strong Republican year in 2014) and some other examples at the congressional level (see: Sean Eldridge) . At the very least, it’s got to give parties pause about plucking wealthy or well-known candidates to go district-shopping and raise big money from California, rather than picking someone with true ties to their potential constituents.
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