DEMOCRATS STILL STRUGGLE TO OVERCOME THEIR RIGHT-WING PROPAGANDA PROBLEM

Well, there you go: Jon Ossoff lost.

Here was Dave Wasserman at FiveThirtyEight not long before the race was called, on the site's live blog of today's two House special elections:

It’s ... legitimately possible that South Carolina’s result could wind up closer than Georgia’s, which would be astounding.

Here was Wasserman about an half hour before that:

If [Democrat Archie] Parnell loses South Carolina by 4 or 5 points, lots of Democratic activists will point fingers at the party’s hierarchy for not getting more involved.... But it’s possible that Parnell is doing well tonight because he wasn’t hyped, not despite it.

Parnell has also been declared a loser of his race -- but he lost by only 3.2 points in a deep-red district. Right now, Ossoff is trailing Republican Karen Handel by 5.2 points in a district that's also solidly red, but where Hillary Clinton made it a squeaker last November.

If Democrats actually did better in the race that didn't get national attention, I worry that it means Democrats struggle to overcome the relentless, 24/7/365 demonization of their party in the right-wing media, which is basically the mainstream media in much of white America. The South Carolina race was ignored by the rest of the country, which means that allegedly nasty nationwide Democrats were never a factor.

In Georgia, Handel voters weren't voting against Ossoff -- they were voting against evil coast-dwellers from New York and Massachusetts and California. They were voting against Nancy Pelosi, history's greatest monster. Watch this:



Ossoff was attacked for getting too much money from outside Georgia -- as noted in the attack ad above, which was paid for by the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is, um, not Georgia-based. Neither are the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Republican National Committee, which contributed massive amounts of money to elect Handel (more than comparable national Democratic organizations).

Party spending in GA-6, per @CarrieNBCNews

NRCC: $6.7M
CLF: $6.5M
RNC: $600K

DCCC: $5M
H Maj PAC: $650K
Pat Maj PAC: $350K

— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) June 21, 2017

On Handel's behalf, a D.C.-based organization made that ad to persuade people that outsiders were too involved in Ossoff's campaign. And it worked.

Maybe this sort of thing won't be a problem in less-Republican districts in 2018 -- and there are a lot of them, so I'm still somewhat optimistic about the Democrats' chances of taking the House. But it may be hopeless in many races to try to pick off Republican voters of long standing, even if they're disillusioned by President Trump and the GOP Congress. They've just been told day after day for years that Democrats are tax-crazy and weak-willed and treasonous and just plain evil, so they routinely come home on Election Day, especially if the Coastal Democratic Menace seems to be a real presence in a particular race.

Democrats don't recognize this GOP propaganda tsunami as a problem. And no, Republicans don't have an identical problem with Democratic voters, because certain Republicans can win in virtually any Democratic state: Governor Charlie Baker in Massachusetts (and many GOP governors before him, including Mitt Romney and Bill Weld). Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg in New York City. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California not long ago. Governor Larry Hogan in Maryland. Most Democratic voters think these Republicans are ... different. (See also Senator Susan Collins in Maine, or Governor John Kasich in Ohio.)

Democrats, by contrast, are nearly always seen to have liberalism cooties. It's a problem that needs to be dealt with.

Looking forward to 2018, sure, I'm rooting for ironworker Randy Bryce to beat Paul Ryan.



But Republicans will try to turn even this guy into a latte-sipping Pelosi clone by November 2018. And they have their voters so primed to believe this of any Democrat that they really might succeed.