With all the ballots counted, Republican Karen Handel won the most expensive House race in U.S. history by 3.8 percentage points.
That’s a larger margin of victory than the 1.5 points that Donald Trump carried Georgia’s 6th Congressional District by last November.
Handel even wound up winning by a greater margin than the GOP candidate in an unexpectedly close special election to replace OMB Director Mick Mulvaney in South Carolina that had not been on the national radar.
The suburban district north of Atlanta is ruby red and has been in GOP hands since Newt Gingrich won it in 1979, but that does not make Jon Ossoff’s defeat any less devastating for Democrats struggling to find their way in the Trump era.
Last night was a wake-up call for Democrats that they still need to home in on an effective anti-Trump message. ...
The results are already prompting Democratic recriminations, as the Bernie Sanders wing of the party pushes the establishment to get behind more liberal candidates. Initially, Ossoff’s mantra was “Make Trump Furious.” But he rarely talked about the president toward the end of the contest because he needed to win over moderate Republicans and didn’t want to motivate low-propensity Trump voters to turn out against him. He modulated his rhetoric, calling for fiscal conservatism in his ads and focusing on jobs. He avoided hot-button issues and called for civility.
Liberal activists and their allied outside groups are grumbling that Ossoff moderated too much...
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The outcome demonstrated that two political fundamentals remain true: Attack ads work, and candidates matter. Democrats pinned their hopes on a 30-year-old who had never run for office before and didn’t even live in the district. Ossoff became more dynamic on the stump as the race dragged on, but his lack of a record made it easy to caricature him. He was a vessel through which Democrats channeled their hopes, but he lacked charisma....
Nancy Pelosi was a huge drag on Ossoff. The most prominent and effective hit on the Democratic candidate was to tie him to the congresswoman from San Francisco....
Handel, 55, has been a fixture of local politics for 15 years. She ...served as Georgia secretary of state and narrowly lost GOP primaries to become governor in 2010 and then senator in 2014. She had the baggage that comes with being a career politician, but her deep roots and relationships certainly helped far more than they hurt. She was a known commodity who came into the race with high name identification.
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Total spending in the race topped $50 million. National Republican groups poured resources into the race to offset Ossoff’s impressive online fundraising. In the end, from the April primary through yesterday’s election, both sides were equally matched on the airwaves...
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A West Wing that has grown accustomed to losing news cycles was in a celebratory mood:
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GOP leaders on Capitol Hill are relieved that Handel’s win will avert a collective freak-out of the rank-and-file.... “Most immediately, the election result could bring momentum to Senate Republicans’ efforts this week to craft their version of a major revision to the Affordable Care Act. ‘We need to finish the drill on health care,’ Handel said during her victory speech” in Brookhaven, Ga.
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Republican lawmakers who have tough reelection races in 2018 will see Handel’s victory as proof that they can thread the needle when it comes to Trump. Handel hardly mentioned him, yet she was still able to win over his supporters. We saw the same dynamic at play in several 2016 contests, as well. As a political reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer notes:
 Bigger picture: Perhaps the GOP House majority isn’t as vulnerable as some people have been saying. But veteran Republican operatives also warn against overreading the lessons of one special election. There are many districts that will be a lot tougher for Republicans to hold than Georgia’s Sixth next November.....
A Los Angeles Times reporter puts it more starkly:
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