Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Positive, Not Earthshaking

There have been four recent special elections held to fill House seats vacated when President Trump appointed the incumbent Republicans to various executive branch roles. Conservative media, to the limited extent it exists, has made much of the fact that Democrats have won none of these elections.

Yes, this is wonderful. No, it isn't particularly unusual or unexpected. POTUS was strongly advised to avoid selecting individuals from toss-up districts where GOP incumbency is valuable. All came from districts which normally elect Republicans, so-called "safe seats."

There were reasons to believe GA-6 could become an exception to this generality. GA (and national) Democrats did everything they could think of, plus spent a ton of money, to help Ossoff win GA-6. It wasn't nearly enough.

I don't expect Democrats to get overly exercised about their "failures" in these districts where they are disadvantaged. And I'd caution Republicans not to become too giddy about the wins for exactly the same reasons.

We're happy the sun comes up each morning, but it isn't big news. These elections became important only if what we expected to happen did not happen. So far, no surprises, ergo not much news.