Kansas, Montana, Georgia, and South Carolina. All DEEP RED districts. But we fought. We contested. Of course it was going to be VERY hard to win these. But we did our job. This is the 50 state strategy. We were very competitive in all of them. We shifted the vote substantially. We over-performed. We made them fight for it and spend lots of money on these.

Everyone wants the 50 state strategy, right? Well, this is it. It is very hard to win these, but we should definitely be fighting for them. It bodes very well in the big picture.

No it was not an inexcusable loss, and this was always going to be very hard and everyone knew it. Let's not kid ourselves.
This is a deep red district where the R won in November by 23 points. McCain and Romney both won by LARGE margins in this district. It has been held by the R's since 1978, nearly 30 years. An 18 point shift is great news in a very real sense, as are all the deep red districts where R's have now found themselves having to spend many millions and actually have to fight for them. None of these should have been this close. We are doing the right thing with a 50 state strategy and strongly contesting even these deep red seats, win or lose.

It is easy to be disappointed even though we got much closer in the these races but were not quite able to win. That's natural. But please, understand that pesky little thing called math. When they have a huge registration advantage, tons of outside dark money, and long traditions of winning these seats, then it is very tough to flip them. Cutting their margins down substantially is real progress. Just imagine what will happen with this continued effort in 2018 to seats R's won in districts that Clinton actually won or which they won by ten points or less?

Always see the BIG picture.

We all knew it would be VERY hard for a Dem to win this seat. Remember, this is NOT a purple district. It is a RELIABLY RED district that R's have won BIG since the late 70's. The R won it by 23 points in November. This time they had to fight like hell to keep it. See the big picture. These Democratic over-performances and Republican under-performances in these deep red reliable Republican districts DO bode well for the party.

As to immediate factors that hurt Ossoff: not living exactly inside the district hurt, the fact the R's nationalized it and called him a Nancy Pelosi Liberal over and over again, and the weather seemed to have hurt D's more than R's. Still, a damn good big picture showing all things considered.

Don't be too disappointed. Keep reforming the party, keep organizing, keep strong, keep fighting. It is HARD to flip deep red reliably Republican seats with large Republican registration advantages.

Here is why the Bill Maher issue has touched a nerve. We obviously are still struggling with matters around race in this country, and people are very sensitive to racially charged language as they should be. At the same time, we are also a people who believe in putting things in context, using reason and fairness, looking at the whole picture, and forgiveness. We tend not to condemn a person's entire life and character over a verbal slip. Bill Maher is a strong progressive and satirical comedian who for many years has had very important discussions, has confronted right wingers very strongly, has brought light to many issues, who brings a variety of opinions to his show, and who ridicules Trump continually. What happened in this incident, if you watch the clip, was an off the cuff satirical joke that went over the top with the language. He has apologized publicly.

More context and a fair point here is that racially charged language appears and has appeared in song lyrics, poetry, dramatizations in many forms, etc. Tough as it is to see and hear, it is used in those specific media as it is about confronting the social issues around the language. Racially and ethnically charged language, moreso in the past, has also been used in satirical and other forms of comedy from the All in the Family TV Show to Richard Pryor's stand up comedy to Don Rickles routines and many others. These people were not racists but were rather the opposite, ridiculing and making fun of racial and ethnic stereotypes through comedy even to the point of invoking their own racial and ethnic backgrounds.

And verbal slips happen. For example, remember when President Obama was poking fun at himself by saying he couldn't even get into the Special Olympics? Oops! He very soon apologized for the slip and even called Arnold Schwarzenegger who was a longtime leader in the Special Olympics organization to apologize. Of course he didn't mean to make fun of disabled people. It was a joke gone bad. These slips happen. We have probably all done it in some way in our lives.

So in the larger picture this is a healthy conversation that requires mutual understanding. In my view Maher went over the top using the N-word in his off the cuff satirical joke and he should have apologized and he has. At the same time, he is certainly not a racist, we must keep things in context, and we should not condemn a person's entire life and character over this kind of slip. There is a lot to be said for forgiveness. That is a Christian value, a progressive value, an American value, and a human value.

1) Quist is a very nice guy with a folksy style, but I watched one of the debates and he just wasn't a very good speaker and looked like an amateur which for politics, he was. I really like him, but he just wasn't very qualified for the position. Dems need to have strong candidates in every race. *** Quist should run for local office. He'd do great on a local town council or maybe in the state legislature. He overshot this one.

2) The national Dems should have come in stronger and sooner. Quist raised a lot of money but it was too late. He got WAY outspent. The national Dems, once and for all, need to compete hard everywhere. They did finally come in, but should have done so much sooner.

3) There is some good news as to the vote shift of sorts. Drumpf won Montana by 23 points and this race was just about a 7 point difference. This is real vote shift progress.

4) Republicans are rabid and will vote for the devil if he has an R by his name. They have no boundaries. They just voted for an unhinged asshole who is going to start his term by going to court for assault. But this is where the R party is. They are rotten, and we can not and must not play nice with them.