The Political Page, T+152 -- June 21, 2017

The Georgia race is worse news for Nancy Pelosi's party than most analysts (and that word is use liberally) are reporting. If one reads the reports about the Georgia race closely, one can note:

• the Party of Pelosi raised over $17 million; the winner raised about $7 million
• overall, the Party of Pelosi outspent the winner by maybe 5 - 1
• despite record amount of money spent on this election, and vast majority of that money probably came from California, the Party of Pelosi lost
• Trump won the district by 1.5 percentage points; Pelosi's party lost by about 6% votes -- a landslide loss; in other words, Handel handily beat her opponent; it wasn't even close -- except perhaps in the eyes of Wolf Blitzer -- and, of course, "close" only counts in horseshoes and nukes (speaking of which, what is NK up to these days?)
• in the south, men generally do better than women. The winner will be the only female in the Georgia delegation
• the winner is not a particularly strong candidate in Georgia; she lost two previous races, only to come back to win against an opponent who ran as a conservative (despite belong to the Party of Pelosi)
• despite record early voting, the Party of Pelosi lost
• in the five months that Trump has been president, his record in special elections is now 5 - 0