Don't Do It, Jon, Or If You Do It, Do It Better

Photo: Dustin Chambers, Ossoff for Congress

Maybe you'll recall Georgia insurgent Democrat Jon Ossoff who ran the most expensive US House election ever (up to that time) for the 6th Congressional District seat in 2017. We gave him space here in March 2017. It was a special election for a vacant seat and the first of what would become a series of special elections in which Democrats won what should have been very Red seats. But Ossoff ended up losing to Republican Karen Handel by a fairly narrow margin. Karen Handel went on to lose her so recently gained seat to Democrat Lucy McBath in November 2018.

Maybe there was a lesson in that: Lucy McBath was a bold progressive, making gun control her signal issue. Jon Ossoff had, by contrast, run a "Republican lite" campaign in 2017. Said a decidedly more-progressive-observer-than-Ossoff, “He didn’t have a core progressive message and that ultimately is why he lost. The Democratic party could spend $100m and he would still lose. Because he didn’t stand for anything."

Democrats have empty suits the same as Republicans.

Now news reaches us this morning that Ossoff is seriously considering a run for the Georgia Senate seat that Johnny Isakson is resigning from.

Oof. What went wrong in 2017 for Ossoff might just as likely go wrong in 2020, but on a bigger scale.