tonight in Georgia with million$$ dumped into the election or are we going to whine that the Russians hacked the results to cover a lackluster candidate? We need candidates that are not afraid to go door-to-door or out in the streets to stand up for our ideals.

It is that or you need to start liking the taste of tRump's boots. Because what they're doing now, it isn't working. My prediction is that tRump is going to fire the special prosecutor now that these elections are over. Get ready for it, it is going to be a long hot summer.

“You have got to, Mary, act in an unprecedented way. Think big. Get involved in every way that you can. stand up and fight back in every way that you can"

With all the money Hillary spent and the backing in the dnc... WHOOSE in the Whitehouse tonight?

No offense to Ossoff, but it sounds like he wasn't willing to attack Handel where it would have counted - tying her to Trump. She skated the entire campaign by keeping Trump at arm's length, while continually 'smearing' Ossoff as a 'San Francisco Pelosi liberal.'

He needed to be a better politician

He is a newbie so I think he will grow from it. I do think the candidates need more anti-Trump in their ads though.

s/he will lose elections like this.

People think that policy matters. It doesn't.

Tribe matters. If you run a Bernie D or a moderate D in GA06, that D will lose.

or that tribe has to go

But I have no idea where and when this ends.

Sorry.

Eventually they fall apart. But the time frame is really variable.

But I have no idea where and when this ends."

Won't be anytime soon IMHO.

points to work through.

The Republicans do this regularly, even if their points are utterly wrong.

But I sure would have a list of core basic principals and how the Republicans are preventing citizens from getting the help they need, that they want.

A Bernie candidate would have only gotten 40% at best. This is a upper-middle class district with only 5% poverty rate.

Because it's so obviously true that simply reading it would cause serious cognitive dissonance.

those who are hurting like Mich, Wisc, and Penn blue collar workers, not well-heeled sub-urbanites.

Ossoff was probably a pretty good fit for GA-06 and I don't think a Bernie-style Democrat would have won or would have done better than Ossoff.

I do agree that populism is the way to go in most working-class areas, though, which is most of the country since most Americans are working class. I would rather spend more time and money winning those folks over since they are a better fit for a center-left party like the Democrats rather than affluent suburbanites who are going to mostly vote Republican unless it is a college town or some other unusual example.

In the earlier election where there were several candidates, Ossoff fell just 2 percentage points short of winning the US House seat outright. He beat everyone, including Handel by huge margins but just barely didn't get the 50.1% which necessitated a run-off against Handel, the next highest finisher.

Outreach Chairman Sanders was busy in Nebraska campaigning in an obscure, mayoral race for a hand-picked candidate and when asked about Ossoff he responded that he didn't know Ossoff was a progressive.

He didn't bother take a couple of days away from a local mayoral race to go to Georgia and help the Democrat Ossoff win a seat to the US House, so I don't know if recommending we run candidates like Bernie when Bernie wasn't too interested himself is workable.

but he wasn't invited to this party. And why should he jump in to be the man left holding the bag when it all falls apart?

This whole mess can be laid at the doorstep of the DNC.

“You have got to, Mary, act in an unprecedented way. Think big. Get involved in every way that you can. stand up and fight back in every way that you can”

His message of populism does not play well with people who are upper middle class like this district. This district has only a 5% poverty rate compared to the 17% of the rest of Georgia.

district and Bernie lost it by 43 pts in the primary. As a matter of fact, Bernie lost all across the South, which is the reason he was not the nominee. His populist message didn't resonate in the South, and particularly in districts like the GA-6. And if he wasn't "invited to this party", I can only presume that Osoff thought his margin of loss would be much larger had he stumped with an avowed Socialist.

As a matter of fact, Bernie hasn't had any wins to date. None of his handpicked candidates were able to cross the finish line, and many of them got stopped in a primary.

In the last election.

And failed only because of rejection from the Dems.

and in that sense he was rejected by Dems.

special elections had NOTHING to do with not running progressive populist candidates in red districts, and the comment that "running a candidate like Bernie would have pulled this one over the finish line", demonstrates the willful ignorance of the OP to what actually happened:

There were 5 Democrats running in that race, including Ossoff.
There were 11 republicans running in that race, including Handle
and 2 independents.

Here were the results for the top 5 before the runoff:

Jon Ossoff (Democratic) 48.12%
Karen Handel (Republican) 19.77%
Bob Gray (Republican) 10.8%
Dan Moody (Republican) 8.84%
Judson Hill (Republican) 8.76%

All the others in that race had less than 1%,

Because of that, Ossoff had a real chance to win the election outright, but not the runoff. That was always a fact, inspite of the media and blogger bullshit. If Ossoff didn't win the election outright, the odds were very much against that he would win the runoff, because all those other republicans would line up behind Handle, and those <1% ers, would add up to about 2% points in Handle's column, along with the undecideds, since a point that seems to be conveniently forgotten, that district has been as red as they come for decades.

That Ossoff lost by 5% in the runoff is amazing considering that Tom Price won that district by 24%

"Blue lies" are the kinds of lies certain groups tell other members, although they know they are lies. Blue lies cement the groups together and further the groups goals.

But truth has nothing to do with the lies told by Republicans and Democrats or Ossof.

can pump up its team with such lies, and the other side tells the truth to its team, one team is going to have an advantage.

Kind of reminds me of the story of a child star who was often told before the take a sad movie that her parents had died. Very motivating and very easy to bring about tears.

Blue lies can bring about white hot hatred, and that's what the right wing is very happy in doing.

As usual, your voice is informed and makes sense.

That's why, and Trump's crud of course, he did so well. I think Ossoff ran a smart campaign. He might have done better if he weren't aiming the ads I saw at upper middle-class, while nodding to other groups. I just thought he should have been a little more aggressive in policy details. I also think he's a compromiser, and some don't like that. But, I think he ran a good campaign in that district. Maybe if he'd gotten a video of him kicking some out-of-line GOPer in the rear, he'd picked up a bunch of votes.

Made a lot of sense to me, but I always like candidates like him. With his faults, he was clearly better than the GOPer, and a lot of Democrats.

Will probably think something else tomorrow.

of a journalist.

Just saying!

Democrat who beat Giantefort in 16...yes 16. Quist was chosen by party insiders partly because of his Sanderesque economic message and there were better candidates available who might have won.

It is still the fault of the DNC??

Man, talk about moving the goal line!

A "Bernie-like" candidate is a tough sell south of Mason-Dixon. Y'all.

I agree with that aspect. They will pull some respect and reclaim votes from that working class block that has been trending away from us.

I always thought Sanders was too liberal to be elected nationwide. 2016 may have been an extremely rare exception, given the opponent. Issues and ideology didn't matter nearly as much as typical.

and financially well-off suburban district.

Which is why they, and MoveOn and Kos and others of the Democratic establishment poured $50 million into the race. Their strategy is to try to flip these suburban purplish districts with Blue Dogs. Rahm Emanuel says so.

Once upon a time, moderate and conservative Democrats could win these races. Does the name Nick Lampson ring a bell for anybody?

I worked on the ground in that TX-22 race after Tom DeLay was finally compelled to resign his seat. It's southwest suburban Houston, an almost-mirror image of GA-6. (It's a long story that I'm not interested in rehashing; Wikipedia has it for you if you don't remember.) It's worth noting in the decade that has passed since that Fort Bend County, much of what comprises TX-22, is the most diverse in the United States: roughly a quarter each white, black, Latin@, and Asian. Still purple.

The special election in South Carolina -- a much different kind of district, mind you; rural and hardscrabble -- seems to suggest that a progressive populist candidate can win back Trump voters. It was a race the DCCC ignored, and it finished closer than GA-6.

http://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/06/20/the-ossoff-parnell-lesson-stop-chasing-romney-voters/

Maybe better read the whole thing, y'all.

Everyone but Bernie is the establishment!!

did residency issues ever come up in that race?

I doubt whether the residency thing was determinative in the GA-6 special (YMMV).

As Matthew Sheffield at Salon suggests, tying Ossoff to Nancy Pelosi my have been more damaging.

Also No More Mister thinks that the GOP strategy of running against DC in general, i.e. "Washington insider" was both stereotypical Republican hypocrisy and a winner for Handel.

And remember that they used Kathy Griffin and the decapitated Trump against Ossoff even as they were calling for "toning down the rhetoric" in the wake of the softball shooting incident.

These three tactics play straight to the GOP mindset of demonizing Democrats, which has a long and successful electoral track record for them. I don't really see how this can be countered in the short run, since it has been achieved in the long one by them.

And calling other Democrats 'establishment' is one of the reasons we lose. Support Democrats...many have suggestions that I know would cause us huge losses but are blinded by a specific economic ideology which is not supported by a majority of the country and would lead to losses as bad as McGovern's loss..

On "Morning Joe" they've been arguing we needed a candidate who "fit the district." Translation: a Republican running as a Democrat. I disagree. My one fault with the Democrats this time around is they were still too nice. Nice doesn't play. It seems to translate into "you're a pushover." We need candidates who are not afraid to call a pussy grabber a pussy grabber. That said, this wasn't a district we were ever likely to win in the first place and it's only for a year and a half. By the time the 2018 midterms people might be begging for Democrats to put healthcare back in place.

a left leaning candidate can win. Sen.Sanders lost a primary, all of the candidates he endorsed (and other liberal Democrats endorsed ) lost special elections, also Sen. Feingold lost...now surely he should have won if you are correct...we do need to run moderate candidates in red states...did you know the left is primarying Manchin...with a candidate that would surely lose West Virginia...totally foolish. We need a big tent...the only way we ever have power.

Sen. Sanders endorsed all of those candidates: none of whom won. It is a heavy lift to elect Dems in red states many of which are gerrymandered. We need to pick candidates based on the state and win governorships to end the gerrymander before 2020 where we get another 10 years unless SCOTUS intervenes...not everyone loves Sen. Sanders...and some like him but would never vote for him or anyone like him. He is mostly used lately as a way to bash the Democratic Party by the GOP. We need to unify and understand that with the gerrymander, it will be really hard. Look to the future.

settle for the candidate with the 'D' next to his name.

We have two camps in the party, and both view the other with contempt.

The GOP has racism, sexism, homophobia, greed, and evangelical sanctimony to unite them... we have opposition to most of those things but very different strategies to combat them. At some point we have to put aside our differences and work together or we're going to be living in Cheetoland for a very long time... and that should scare the fuck out of all of us enough to find a way to mend our fences within the party.

Moving forward I'd propose that neither Bernie nor the Clintons (including Chelsea) be our nominee in 2020 or 2024... let's see some new faces, and hopefully some new ideas.

Not me personally but people like me, women of color.

However, we can't allow anyone to make up stories that the data doesn't support. Sanders candidates are not winning in districts that we are told repeatedly should be good for them (white working class).

So maybe people should stop distorting reality.

and in that regard, Ossoff wasn't the best fit IMHO. Go back to 2008 and the party did an excellent job of candidate recruitment. Of course it helps to have a rock star at the top of the ticket, but recently we've underperformed in too many races, and spent ungodly amounts of money in the process.

Somebody smarter than me needs to steer the party out of the shoals, for Pete's sake we've got the political gift that keeps giving tweeting insanity on a daily basis and we still can't win these elections? I don't know, maybe it's just the wrong districts, but I know we are all aching to put something in the "W" column...

Not sure what people get out of pretending that this was easily winnable by someone else

Some Democrats insist on purity in their candidates or they won't vote (or go 3rd party).

We have loyal party members like we on DU who will always vote for the Democratic Candidate and then we have leftist enamored with someone who is not a member of the Democratic Party and who regularly disparages the party. So much that they will sit out an election if their choice is not the candidate

But that did not play in GA6. We were not winning that race and came about as close as possible.

This bears repeating:

Bernie's, who I voted for, montra was. WE HAVE TO PUSH THE FAIR, FAIR, FAIR, FAIR FAIR not FREE, FREE, FREE, FREE, FREE agenda. Free stuff to "them" means the Minorities, Gays etc get the stuff, it's the them vs us rule. Fairness is what has to be the discussion. I have not heard that being stressed enough. JMHO.

Winners!

The Democrat did very well in GA-6. He might have won, but didn't. A win would have been a big surprise, I think.

If a moderate Democrat can't win in a heavily Republican district, what makes you think that a "progressive populist" Bernie Sanders-esque Democrat could win? Anyway, they have to get through the primaries first, which isn't happening, so right out of the gate they are not winning even those.

We need to run the best candidates for the region, and we need to get out the vote. That is how we win. Those who do win and gain office need to fight against voter suppression; we should demand more action on that.

Attacking our own only helps the GOP.

nationally i think we Bernie.

Let's face it: The overwhelming majority of areas in the South & Midwest where Whites constitute a majority are racist, bigoted cesspits where hate and fear prevail. We're never going to get the deploarables to embrace our message of equality and diversity, and I despise the thought of any Democrat having to lower themselves to their level just to win. It's degrading.

The solution may lie in the initiative started by President Obama last year in Maryland to provide Housing Choice Vouchers for poor minorities into higher opportunity areas to promote better housing mobility. This initiative stemmed form the Supreme Court ruling in June, 2015 that stated that federal housing law permits people to challenge housing practices deemed to have a harmful impact on minority groups. Indeed, HUD actually issued a regulation intended to move people into these areas of higher opportunity.

In addition, we not only need to continue to fighting Dump's racist and xenophobic immigration policies, but we need to make an effort to settle these newcomers into these areas of higher opportunity as well. In other words, we need start using the true strength of our party, our diversity, to help enlighten these dark wastelands of bigotry and fear and bring them into the Democratic fold. There's probably no other way. The Republicans will never allow fair elections and democracy to gain a foothold in these areas, and the people living in these areas won't listen to reason. Therefore, the only way to enlighten these areas is with people...diverse people. Perhaps living next to people who are different than themselves will help make these deplorables more worldly.

We need progressives who fight for the 99% and have policies and
positions to support them.

These people have been willfully voting against their best interests for decades. It's not as if they don't know that by now. What makes you think they'd embrace logic and their best interests now?

... especially in that very RED district that was NOT a swing-district. So many woulda-shoulda-coulda's without ONE ounce of evidence to support these claims.