Why Georgia went R

[Technocracy Timmy]

The perception of Ossaff as an immature millennial, this still being a pretty R district at heart, Handel being a good opponent, the races extreme nationalization, successful attack ads against Ossaff, etc all hurt.

Handel wasn't that good of a candidate (she didn't even have an incumbent advantage) and Ossoff ran not only a great campaign but messaged himself as best as he possibly could for the kind of reluctant Trump voters in this district. This is what RINO Tom and I have been saying all along: in order to win over these kind of voters in the sunbelt (notwithstanding districts that have changed primarily because of an influx of minorities or millennials), the Democrats are gonna have to moderate more on economics to bring the affluent college educated suburban whites into the fold of the Democratic Party. That's the price we're gonna have to pay to bring them in.

[Technocracy Timmy]

The perception of Ossaff as an immature millennial, this still being a pretty R district at heart, Handel being a good opponent, the races extreme nationalization, successful attack ads against Ossaff, etc all hurt.

Handel wasn't that good of a candidate (she didn't even have an incumbent advantage) and Ossoff ran not only a great campaign but messaged himself as best as he possibly could for the kind of reluctant Trump voters in this district. This is what RINO Tom and I have been saying all along: in order to win over these kind of voters in the sunbelt (notwithstanding districts that have changed primarily because of an influx of minorities or millennials), the Democrats are gonna have to moderate more on economics to bring the affluent college educated suburban whites into the fold of the Democratic Party. That's the price we're gonna have to pay to bring them in.

I don't agree. One striking thing is the money and national attention spent in SC 05 versus GA 06. There was next to no money spent in SC 05, no preparation, nothing, Yet, that district returned 48% Democratic. I think that the GOP spent money and nationalized the race to keep the college educated cohort Republican enough to win this race. They had to nationalize and polarize the election through advertisements and spending and national attention to keep it GOP by 4 points. This is a district that was Romney +23 in 2012 and shifted radically in 2016; and clearly has maintained that shift.

I think the GOP had a worse night in the long run. They learned that to maintain the House majority, they need to dial up the polarization to 11 and spend a lot more money while the Democrats can pick off sleeper seats with minimal investment. I think a lot of people are underestimating the dangers of the GOP strategy (they can't polarize a 50-50 country forever without the dam breaking).

We learned the GOP base needs money and national investments to come out whereas the Democratic base is going to storm out no matter what. That actually fits with what we know of the number of specials so far.

There's no doubt that the tide is shifting but when you look at districts like SC-05 or MT-AL it's clear that this has more to do with the national environment we're in than anything of a sunbelt or wealthy college educated whites trending Democrat. I guess the point I was trying to get at is that this notion that Romney-Clinton voters are somehow just as easy if not easier to win over than the Obama-Trump cohort hasn't been on display in any of these special elections.

[Technocracy Timmy]

There's no doubt that the tide is shifting but when you look at districts like SC-05 or MT-AL it's clear that this has more to do with the national environment we're in than anything of a sunbelt or wealthy college educated whites trending Democrat.

The GOP rose from the dead after Obama's initial victory and claimed a ton of seats they hadn't held for a long time, many in over a century, and Democrats never got them back.

I just don't see why their inroads into suburbia are different, and only temporary. Especially after we are seeing the numbers stick so far. At the very least, right now, there is no good evidence to suggest one theory is more correct than the other, no?

I think the ultimate takeaway is that Obama-Trump vs Romney-Clinton/Rust belt vs Sunbelt/etc. it's all just building infrastructure for the future. The Democrats since Reagan have only taken back significant political power when the economy is in a downturn (1992, 2008, etc.) even 2006 was caused in part by Bush threatening to privatize SS. This has been a constant theme with Democratic victories in this GOP alignment.

Most people don't think critically about trends or momentum shifting like us atlas nerds do. Your average American just sees that every single special election race that's been (in part) a referendum on Trump go down for the Democratic candidate 6 times in a row now. Most are not gonna sit down and try to rationalize what they saw with trends or anything like that; they're just gonna become demoralized seeing this unfold.

TD was right. Democrats aren't coming back until sh*t hits the fan with an economic crisis. Trump's institutional and civic instability clearly isn't enough to win the back the House alone. We can build infrastructure for the future races wherever Democrats happen to become competitive. But for the time being these kind of voters be they rural, suburban, college educated or noncollege educated, etc. are just gonna default to their partisan lines and belief that big government is horrible (at least philosophically) until an economic crisis hits and hits hard. I've realized that that's the only way these voters shift to the Democrats and shift long term.