Karen Handel

-by Valley GirlI live in Georgia. I voted early. I voted last Friday at an early voting location, not where I usually vote during primaries, midterms, or general elections. I waited in line for an hour and a half.

Last year, in a special election to replace Tom Price-- who Trump had named to his cabinet (and soon fired him once it became public he was as crooked as almost everyone else in the cabinet)-- Republican Karen Handel beat Democrat Jon Ossoff 134,799 (51.8%) to 125,517 (48.2%) in the R+8 suburban Atlanta district where Trump had only defeated Hillary 48.3-46.8%.

-by NoahExcept for the times that Republicans start speaking complete gibberish, it’s not really hard to understand what they’re saying. What is difficult is understanding how they got the way they are. Did their moms drink way too much alcohol when they were in the womb? Were the water pipes in their childhood homes made of corroding lead? Were things like greed, hate, thugishness, and nihilism just drilled into them by horrid parents?

Republican candidate for Georgia’s 6th District Congressional seat Karen Handel declares victory during an election-night watch party, June 20, 2017, in Atlanta. (AP/John Bazemore)
GEORGIA — (Analysis) The recent special election to fill the Georgia Sixth Congressional District seat formerly held by Republican Tom Price, who was appointed to Donald Trump’s cabinet as Secretary of Health and Human Services, was the focus of extraordinary attention and expenditure.

Tom Price’s vacating of a Georgia congressional seat set the scene for exactly what is darkly wrong with US politics. In the sprawling kleptomanic entity known as USA Inc., with its distancing between the concept of representation and the money that backs it, a campaign for one congressional seat can cost tens of millions.

Democratic candidate for 6th congressional district Jon Ossoff adjusts his microphone as he concedes to Republican Karen Handel at his election night party in Atlanta, June 20, 2017. (AP/David Goldman)
Published in partnership with Shadowproof.

Today’s the day in GA-06. The most recent poll shows Ossoff up but within the margin of error, as most polls have shown. This one has Ossoff winning with 49.7% to Handel’s 48.0%, despite Ryan and Trump pouting tens of millions of dollars into the race. Many see the race as a referendum on Trump. 91% of Ossoff voters have an unfavorable opinion him and 78% of Handel voters have a favorable opinion.

My neighbor keeps complaining to me that Trump isn’t been impeached yet. She wants to know when it will happen. She doesn’t want to hear that the most obvious answer is in 2018 when theDemocrats take over the House. So I explain to her that if a time comes when more Republicans in Congress feel their own jobs are in jeopardy from supporting Trump than from abandoning Trump, that’s when they could possibly move. The problem, of course, is that all those national numbers showing Trump’s cascading approval numbers are not spread evenly across districts.

Thursday one of the Trumpist dark money front groups, America First Policies, dumped another $1,339,990 into GA-06 to smear Ossoff and bolster the failing Republican candidate, Karen Handel, after her stunningly bad debate performance. Republican dark and dirty money groups, like Paul Ryan's shady SuperPAC and America First Policies, have rushed something like $30,000,000 to GA-06 so far-- they will spend much more by Tuesday-- and they have no choice.

Yesterday, conservatives Barbara Comstock (R-VA), Erik Paulsen (R-MN) and Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) backed Justin Amash's and Walter Jones' demands for an independent investigation into Putin-Gate. Amash and Jones are in red Trump districts and acted out of principle and patriotism.