Another election night in America, another failure for the Democratic Party. Having spent a mind-boggling $23 million trying to win a congressional seat in Atlanta, Georgia, the Democrats lost to Republican candidate Karen Handel.
The Democrats had been desperate to paint the contest in Georgia as a ‘referendum’ on the Trump presidency, especially since the reasonably affluent area was thought to be a prefect example of the sort of place Trump’s support was collapsing, the sort of congressional seat the party would need to start winning back in the mid-term elections next year. A win here, it was thought, would show that Trumpism wasn’t working.
But it seems that the Republican Party’s election machinery — with or without Trump — is more solid than its critics think. The Republicans countered the Democrats strategy by presenting the vote as a referendum on Nancy Pelosi, the somewhat toxically liberal minority leader of the House. That proved a winning ploy. (They also spent huge sums defending the seat too – making it the most expensive congressional race in US history.)
Within the story of that race is perhaps the most interesting point about American politics in the age of Trump. No matter how disastrous and unloved the Donald is, he and his party still seem able to beat the Democrats in key swing seats.
For all the hoopla surrounding the chaotic 45th presidency, the Democrats have proven amazingly unable to provide coherent opposition to Trump’s rule. Trump’s theatrical, social-media-amplified leadership means that – as in the election last year – he hogs all the air time. The Democrats, obsessed as they are in Washington with the story of Trump’s Russian connections, find themselves curiously sidelined, and unpopular.
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