Georgia’s 6th District Special Election: The Trump Referendum

Ominous development for Democrats.

There’s much more than meets the eye here.  True, Georgia’s 6th Congressional District is and has been a strongly Republican district, but it was a very weak Trump district. It was and is full of very reluctant Trump voters, which made it a juicy target for Democratic strategists. Trump won the national election last year in spite of himself.  Simply stated, Donald Trump captured a sizeable share of voters who really didn’t like him.  It’s true.   Analysis of post-election survey data reveals that about 7 percent of all voters are so-called reluctant Trump voters.  They didn’t like Trump, and they didn’t like Hillary Clinton very much either.  Flip about half of the so-called reluctant Trump voters, the reasoning goes, and you can flip the entire election map.  We would agree IF the Democrats handled this critical reality with a modicum of sophistication and strategic judgment. But, instead, as we’ve opined over and over again in our recent essays, the Never-Ever-Trump-Resistance movement, and the left-leaning media that provides non-stop wind for its sails has so overplayed their cards that a backlash that redounds to Trump’s benefit was likely to emerge.  And now it has.

Georgia’s 6th congressional district is one of the most highly educated districts in the country. These highly educated districts are areas with which Trump generally has trouble. Reluctant Trump voters, as might be expected, have had more education than other Trump voters; it’s one of their defining characteristics as a group. In the 2016 election, 37 percent of reluctant Trump voters have at least one college degree compared with 25 percent of all other Trump voters. That’s exactly consistent with the general movement away from the Republican Party by well-educated voters in 2016. The latest American Community Survey finds that 58 percent of Georgia’s 6th District residents age 25 and older have at least one college degree, which is higher than all but five other congressional districts in the entire nation. This would not generally be considered fertile Trump territory.  And in fact, it isn’t now and it wasn’t last November.

Think of it. John McCain took Georgia’s 6th with 62 percent of the vote beating Barack Obama by 18 percentage points, and Mitt Romney topped that with 68 percent of the vote, beating Obama by over 23 percentage points.  Donald Trump squandered that traditional Republican lead and squeaked by with 48 percent of the vote,  beating Clinton by barely one percentage point. That’s why the Democrats, quite correctly, focused on this congressional race like a laser. They raised seven times more money for the Democrat Jon Ossoff than the Republicans raised for their candidate, Karen Handel. Democrats poured approximately $30 million into Ossoff’s coffers (mostly from California), compared to barely $4 million that Handel raised.  Ossoff wasn’t a long shot, dark horse. It was his to lose — and he did.

So what or who beat Ossoff? Karen Handel is a seasoned state politician, but not that charismatic and not that well funded.  In fact, she was swamped by the Ossoff campaign’s fundraising. The ridiculous $30 million Ossoff raised made his campaign the highest and best funded congressional campaign in American history. Yet Handel won comfortably with nearly a 4-point margin of victory.

As our readers know, we’re not entirely surprised.  We have in these essays warned time and time again that near 24-hour Trump bashing by much of cable news and leading print news was almost certain to backfire just as it did in 1972. That’s  when Richard Nixon, forty-five years ago, beleaguered by Viet Nam, the King Assassination, widespread urban riots, anti-Nixon protests throughout the country, Kent State, and Watergate called upon the “Great Silent Majority” in whose sense of fair play he professed confidence and placed his trust. His confidence and trust were well founded.  He went on to win in the greatest presidential landslide in American history.

The greatest Special Prosecutor Investigation since Watergate and  Whitewater is now underway. The Watergate and Whitewater investigations both involved known crimes, and a Special Prosecutor was appointed to determine whether Nixon, in the case of Watergate, and Clinton(s) in the case of Whitewater were implicated in a crime that had previously taken place. In Watergate, there had been a burglary, and in Whitewater there had been 18 felony convictions attributed to Whitewater partner Madison Guarantee Savings and Loan owned by James McDougal (Clinton’s partner in Whitewater).  In the current investigation, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, seems to be looking for a crime (any crime will do), and then whether Trump or his campaign participated in the yet undiscovered crime. There is a difference, which many find troubling. Count us among them.

We believe we have just witnessed the first indication of a dramatic backlash that is building against the almost hysterical over-the-top Stop Trump at-any-cost movement about which we’ve been warning for weeks. In this case “at any cost” was a $30 million cash assault on a Georgia congressional district. Thirty million dollars gone with the wind like the lost cause at Tara one hundred and fifty years ago.