Why Are All My Republican Friends So Giddy This Morning?

My good friends on the Republican side of the aisle are beside themselves this morning, they are filled with joy and optimism because of last night's slim victory for Karen Handel, the Republican, over Jon Ossoff, the Democrat, in the highly charged U.S. House race.

They’re telling me it’s a statement. They're saying it's a clear, unmistakable sign that the GOP remains united and that their embattled President has weathered the early storms and overcome his critics. But that's a pretty skewed conclusion to reach from studying the results of this special election. If anything, this election tells me that the opposite is true.

A Democrat winning in this deep-red district would obviously have been a slam dunk. But this election nevertheless is a three-pointer for the Dems in that it demonstrated, in real numbers and real time, the swift and enormous shift in sensibilities of a largely educated deep-south district that has not voted for a Democrat for President in decades.

Sure, the anti-Nancy Pelosi campaign theme remains an effective one for Republicans of all stripes in the South. But the fact that a Democratic candidate did so well is the takeaway.

Tom Price, Trump’s dishonest, compassionless Secretary of Health and Human Services, won in that same district just seven months ago by more than 23 percentage points. But Handel defeated Ossoff by less than 5 percentage points. In other words, a win's a win, except when it isn't.

Bottom line? Despite the GOP's party mode this morning, if we see a swing anywhere near that large nationwide in the midterms next year, the Democrats will take over the House, easily.

One can only hope. As a staunch moderate with some liberal views and some conservative ones, I've never been this partisan in my life. I could have voted for Ohio Gov. John Kasich over Hillary Clinton last November.

But this is the worst group of reactionary, knuckle-dragging Republicans to infest the Beltway since Sen. Joe McCarthy walked the earth.

These are some demonstrably hate-filled folks in DC these days who are hell-bent on destroying this country in all kinds of ways and reversing real progress on countless fronts. They care not about working Americans, the poor, seniors, cancer patients, minorities, the environment, science, or international diplomacy, for starters. 

More than I can ever recall, this is a party that shamelessly caters to the rich and to big business. And this President is a global embarrassment.

But back to Georgia, where I personally didn’t expect Ossoff to win last night. I had a feeling the reactionary crowd would step up and just not let it happen, precisely because the Dems wanted it so badly and spent so much money on this race. 

But I did expect it to be close, and it was. Symbolically, significantly, satisfyingly close. We’ll see what happens in the next 18 months. 

But mark my word: if Trump keeps making an absolute mockery of the presidency and keeps making a fool of himself on and off Twitter, if he signs this despicable healthcare bill, which will inevitably and profoundly hurt millions in Trump's base and which Senate republicans are now re-crafting with zero input from their Democratic colleagues or from the American public, and if he gives gargantuan tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and says the rest of us be damned, the midterms will be very interesting.

Trump, his cabinet, and the Republicans in Congress are all largely a disaster both in style and substance. The corruption is evident, and so is the incompetence. 

The election results last night, as well as the historically low approval ratings for this President, show that folks across the nation are coming to their senses. Because that's what Americans do eventually. We come to our senses. We know a skunk when we smell one. It just takes us a while sometimes.