For eight months since the election, the Democratic Party has teetered on the brink of suicidality. Driven mad by the election of President Trump, they’ve decided to waste their political capital on rumormongering about Trump’s supposed nefarious Russian connections and fulminating about a “stolen election.” They’ve lashed out in rage at the electorate, which they’ve termed racist and sexist and homophobic. They’ve failed to come to grips with the one simple fact that explains why Donald Trump won: Hillary Clinton was the worst candidate in the history of the republic, and the Democrats went all-in for her.
Because Democrats still can’t come to grips with that fact, they’re now applying the same outrage tactics to voters in the Georgia 6th Congressional District that they’ve applied to voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin since November. Never mind that the GA-6 has been Republican for four decades, and that only a bizarre confluence of events even led to the district being competitive. No, 31-year-old ne’er-do-well Jon Ossoff would have won if it weren’t for Republican bigotry.
With that in mind, here were the four most indicative Democratic responses to Ossoff’s loss to solid Republican Karen Handel.
1. Republicans Are Just Evil. Here’s feminist writer Jill Filipovic on the topic:
Given that this was Hillary Clinton’s exact strategy in 2016 and it failed dramatically, Democrats should certainly continue to insult voters with whom they disagree.
2. Democrats Must Move To The Left. After barely losing in South Carolina and Georgia, some Democrats now say that their party must embrace Bernie Sanders socialism and radical transgender bathroom policies. Or something. Here’s Sally Kohn:
Good idea, Sally. Let’s do that.
3. We Need A Hug. Alyssa Milano certainly had the most amusing reaction of the evening. After Hollywood spent an inordinate amount of time and resources pushing Ossoff to defeat, Milano mourned:
Okay then. Weird, but okay.
4. Civility Will Never Work! Over at the The Washington Post, Paul Kane theorizes that Ossoff was too polite. “The most passionate Democratic activists have wanted a full-frontal assault on Trump and congressional Republicans, angrily denouncing party leaders for not aggressively supporting more progressive candidates,” writes Kane. “So Ossoff chose the high priest route instead of the fierce warrior. It was civil disobedience rather than civil unrest. And he still lost, by an even wider margin than the almost forgotten Parnell.” Yes, Democrats need to get more aggressive, speak more loudly, be ruder and more obnoxious. That’s the ticket! Democrats have been so befuddled by Trump that they now believe that Trump won by being vulgar, not because Hillary was an awful candidate. Never mind that Karen Handel is the most polite, milquetoast Republican candidate in recent memory and just shellacked Ossoff.
All of these responses are self-congratulatory, of course. They acknowledge no Democrat sin other than failures of purism. They don’t get that their entire approach is failing because they are alienating half the country — and so they continue to alienate half the country.
Brilliant.
Please, Democrats, keep the hot takes coming.