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On the Eve of Georgia Special Election, Trump Enters Fray with Scathing Tweet

On the Eve of Georgia Special Election, Trump Enters Fray with Scathing Tweet

Accuses Ossoff of wanting to “protect criminals, allow illegal immigration and raise taxes!”

https://youtu.be/qi7-c3HaQzY

On the eve of the special election in Georgia’s 6th district, news of President Trump’s approval hitting 50% on Rasmussen’s Presidential Tracking Poll is being blasted from the rafters by Drudge and retweeted by the President himself.  However, Rasmussen’s appears to be an outlier, though Gallup has him up by two points at 41%.

This is an important point because Georgia’s 6th, Newt Gingrich’s old district, only barely went for Trump last November, and the progressive Democrat, Jon Ossoff, began his campaign as a “Make Trump Furious” effort and in doing so, has intentionally made the special election a referendum on Trump.

This “resist we much” strategy worked for him in terms of fundraising, but it’s not at all clear that the relatively conservative voters in Georgia’s 6th want to play along.  Of the astounding influx of money into Ossoff’s “Make Trump Furious” campaign, only 5% came from within the district.

For his part, President Trump has entered the fray.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/853964023846588420

Ossoff responded to the President’s tweet as follows:

“While I’m glad the president is interested in the race, he is misinformed,” Ossoff said in a statement released by his campaign. “I’m focused on bringing fresh leadership, accountability and bipartisan problem solving to Washington to cut wasteful spending and grow metro Atlanta’s economy into the Silicon Valley of the South.”

Ossoff, realizing that the anti-Trump message got him only so far (and largely only with people outside the district in which he is running . . . but does not live), has switched to a “nonpartisan message of pragmatism that he hopes will make conservative-leaning independents and soft Republicans feel comfortable voting for a Democrat.”

It’s unlikely to work, however.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight writes:

If the polls are right, then Democrat Jon Ossoff will receive by far the most votes in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, which is holding a special election to replace former U.S. Rep. Tom Price on Tuesday.1 But Ossoff will probably finish with less than 50 percent of the vote, which would trigger a runoff between him and the next-highest finisher — most likely the Republican Karen Handel, but possibly one of three other Republicans (Bob Gray, Dan Moody Judson Hill) who are closely bunched behind her in polls.

Furthermore, the combined vote for all Republican candidates will probably exceed the combined vote for Ossoff and other Democrats, although it should be close. And the district has historically been Republican-leaning, although it was much less so in the 2016 election than it had been previously. All of this makes for a fairly confusing set of circumstances and a hard-to-forecast outcome.

If Ossoff fails to meet the 50+1 threshold, the GOP will have a chance to regroup and coalesce behind a single candidate for June’s runoff.  It is unlikely that Ossoff will pull off a victory at that point.

Apply these principles to the Georgia 6 race, and you’ll conclude that Tuesday night’s first round won’t actually resolve that much — unless Ossoff hits 50 percent of the vote and averts the runoff entirely. (That’s an unlikely but hardly impossible scenario given the fairly high error margins of polls under these circumstances.) Even if Ossoff finishes in the low 40s, it will be hard to rule him out in the second round provided that he still finishes in first place by a comfortable margin. But even if Ossoff finishes just a point or two shy of 50 percent, and Democrats finish with more votes than Republicans overall,3 he won’t have any guarantees in the runoff given that it’s a Republican-leaning district and that the GOP will have a chance to regroup.

Interestingly, Cook’s Political Report has moved the Georgia 6th district special election from “Leans Republican” to a Republican toss up.

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Comments

inspectorudy | April 17, 2017 at 8:23 pm

I live near this district but understand why Trump did not sweep like Price has for years. There are a lot of upper-middle class neighborhoods that were like me in that they wanted someone else on the ticket against hillary. They didn’t get it and many did not vote since, contrary to the msm, GA was going to stay red. I do not believe they will stay at home on this vote. They now see what a disaster it would be for this liberal flake to take that seat away from them. This guy has gotten almost no money from the locals and is represented by Hollywood and the liberal msm as a champion. As one local DJ said on the radio, “It looks like Ossoff is connected to the medical industry. Oh, wait a minute, that’s not HMO there’s another “O” in that word”. Just one more issue to get over.

    casualobserver in reply to inspectorudy. | April 17, 2017 at 9:55 pm

    I know quite a few who live in that district and the last thing you mention wouldn’t matter to them or most anyone they know. What matters more is his positions and the fact that he has done very little to convince many he would really be independent and not join the House monolith that includes some really wacky and unpalatable people like loony Maxine Waters.

    His personal story comes in way down the list for anyone under 70.

    Tom Servo in reply to inspectorudy. | April 18, 2017 at 12:19 am

    This reminds me a whole lot of the setup of the Wendy Davis governer’s run a couple years back – big piles of outside money, endless glowing press gushing about how Wendy is going to take Texas Blue again!!! Polls showed Abbott with support in the low 40’s.

    Final Tally, Abbot, 59%, Wendy Davis, 38% (rounded) Yep, those polls were spot on. And all those glowing predictions about how popular she was – only AFTER the race did they finally start to notice “oh, all of her money and support came from outside the state, huh, guess that’s why she had no base support she could depend on.”

    Anyway, Ossoff looks like the same story.

    That’s pretty much how I read this too. The RNC is going along with the narrative that Georgia is turning blue when it isn’t. It is really the GOP exploiting an anti-conservative narrative to undermine Trump. Where is Trump defending the 2016 mandate narrative? Where is ANYONE?

I live just outside this district so I’m hit with radio ads constantly on my drive to and from work. What’s fascinating is Osoff has studiously avoided mentioning his party affiliation in many of his ads. It’s like a “name that party” crime story, but these are official campaign ads. I don’t think it shows strength when you avoid your party affiliation.

Additionally, while the MSM and Democrats continuously tout his large campaign war chest, I get the sense from other Georgians that they don’t much care that its largely funded by Hollywood and other out of state partisan groups. Heck, even Planned Parenthood reportedly chipped in 150k.

    scooterjay in reply to SamVonSam. | April 17, 2017 at 9:47 pm

    Interesting observation, the “lack of party affiliation” phenomenon. I’ve noticed that for the past 4 years in local elections here in SC…..while the Republican candidates proudly announce their affiliation you can barely find mention of the dreaded “D” in their adversaries campaign.

Ewww…

A T-rump tweet.

Heavy…

    4th armored div in reply to Ragspierre. | April 18, 2017 at 1:36 am

    Rags – you’ve lost your mind as well as your sense of humor or self worth – forget about patriotism.

    find a shrink real soon – the 2016 election is over and the patriot WON!

Has anyone asked him what makes up that “wasteful spending,” much less what caused it?

If for no other reason, the Georgia voters must reject Ossoff because of fact his contributions consist of 95% out-of-state interests.

buckeyeminuteman | April 18, 2017 at 2:06 pm

Even Samuel L. Jackson has chimed in on this race. “Vote muthafu&#er!”

And the guy doesn’t even live in the district. This is so stupid.

A carpetbagger running in a district he is not legally qualified to vote in and on out-of-state money. So the GOP runs 12 candidates (suicide by stampede) and he still can’t prevail.

What is WRONG with Georgia?!? This is exactly how the GOP destroyed CA. The GOP is not a separate political party but rather a special ops unit of the DNC and the dirty globalist money. And the Stupid Party has only gotten more stupid since Trump’s landslide election.

The GOP is heading for an epic bloodbath in 2018. Georgia is only going to steel their resolve to commit suicide and restore the old kabuki theater. The Master of the Universe command it!