Why People Say Georgia Is The Center Of Electronic Vote Theft-- It Is

-by Valley Girl

I 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. I got off easy considering waits at many other voting locations in GA, both in early voting, and on election day. Four to 7 hours waiting to vote.

  I voted for Stacey Abrams for Governor. I voted on a Diebold machine. No paper trail. No punch-card ballots with hanging chads. There is no other choice in Georgia. One has to “vote Diebold.”

  I’ve been closely following the Abrams- Kemp race, and related events on election day and after. I have read and bookmarked so many articles that if articles were horses, I would happily imagine imagine SoS (Son of Satan) Brian Kemp being ground into the dirt by a pack of horses. Like the field trying to chase Secretariat to the finish line at the Belmont, to win the Triple Crown. But, I digress. Forgive me. I just had to watch a “feel good” moment on youtube.



Just earlier today I happened upon this article from Medium. It was published on June 29, 2018, updated August 20, 2018.

Title of the article is: Georgia: The Epicenter of America’s Corrupted Electronic Elections

The article discusses the Georgia 6th District special election of 2017 Jon Ossoff v. Karen Handel, which was the catalyst for the Georgia paper ballot suit, as well as the disturbing history of Georgia’s corrupted electronic elections from 2002 through the present. This is a VERY long article, but well worth reading in it’s entirety.

  However, not to be left out, is this from the article:  "Republican Karen Handel an anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ, pro-gun 'Christian.'"

For this post, I’m going to cut it down to Diebold, but alas I’ll have to leave out some very interesting Diebold history. There a lot of crooks and liars involved. And, anything in bold or underline below is my doing.

And, I’m leaving out a huge amount of text and information from the article that have to do with this important subject-- electronic voting machines. It makes me feel sick to do so. But, please, go read the article at the link above!   

August 7, 2018, the plaintiffs in the federal action titled Donna Curling, et al. v. Brian Kemp, et al., filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to enjoin the state of Georgia from using its paperless touchscreen voting machines in the November midterm elections. As explained in the lawsuit, when voting machines are paperless, there is no independent record of voter intent with which to confirm the legitimacy of an electronic vote tally. Thus, according to the plaintiffs, the state must instead allow voters to hand mark paper ballots at the polls.

The court denied the motion. It reasoned that although the plaintiffs are likely to win on the merits of their claim that Georgia’s paperless machines are unconstitutional, it would cause too much “chaos” and “confusion” to switch to paper ballots at this late date.

[VG: Gawd forbid that we should have chaos and confusion]

...Georgia is one of just five states that still exclusively uses paperless voting machines. Paperless voting machines are an especially attractive target for hackers because there is nothing to compare against the electronic tally to confirm whether it was manipulated. Thus, the only way to know if a paperless machine has been hacked is to conduct a forensic audit, which courts have consistently refused to allow based on the purportedly proprietary nature of the vendors’ software.

Georgia bought its paperless machines from Diebold Election Systems in 2002, making Georgia the “first state to launch electronic voting statewide.” At the time, Georgia’s Secretary of State was Cathy Cox, who allowed Diebold to use her image on its promotional materials.

….Diebold had entered the voting machine business just a few months prior with its acquisition of Global Election Systems, a company founded by three criminals….Global’s Senior VP was a convicted felon, Jeffrey Dean, who had served time for sophisticated crimes involving “computer tampering.” …Soon after hiring Dean, Global hired convicted cocaine trafficker John Elder to oversee punch card printing in several states.

Diebold acquired Global during President George W. Bush’s first administration, just as Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which allocated billions for states to buy new voting machines.

…The bill’s primary sponsor was Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio who used his position as chairman to defeat legislation that would have required voting machines to include a paper trail.

Ney would eventually go to prison for corruption involving his acceptance of bribes from Washington DC lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose firm received at least $275,000 to lobby the federal government on behalf of Diebold, the number one vendor of paperless voting machines… Abramoff was a member of Bush’s Rangers and Pioneers, an elite group of fundraisers who had raised at least $100,000 for Bush’s reelection campaign. He too would eventually land in prison for corruption involving his lobbying work.

…Georgia Secretary of State Cox -- who had been “very active in working with members of Congress on the Help America Vote Act”-- signed Georgia’s contract with Diebold on or about May 3, 2002.

  …The ensuing election in November 2002 yielded several surprising Republican victories in Georgia. The most notable upset occurred when Saxby Chambliss, a favorite of the Christian Right and President Bush, defeated incumbent senator Max Cleland (D).

Karl Rove and Ralph Reed-- a Republican strategist in Georgia-- had personally recruited Chambliss to run against Cleland. Cleland, a decorated Vietnam veteran, lost to Chambliss by 7 points even though election polls on the “eve of the 2002 general election showed… Cleland ahead… by 2–5 points,” a swing of 9–12 points.

An analysis of Chambliss’s victory revealed that, “nearly 60% of the state’s electorate by county switched party allegiances between the primaries and the general election.” Chambliss’s surprising victory helped the GOP take control of the US Senate. (It needed only two seats.)

…During the same election, Brian Kemp  [Nov 2002]-- Georgia’s current Secretary of State--  defeated Doug Haines, a liberal incumbent in a left-leaning state House seat that had been held by Democrats for more than four decades. Kemp won by only 486 votes, an exceedingly small vote margin that likely would have triggered a recount but for the paperless machines.

In 2003, “A former worker in the Diebold warehouse in Georgia” alleged that the company had patched Georgia’s voting machines after they were delivered to the counties and shortly before the… election in 2002… Equally disturbing, in 2004, the DHS quietly released a Cyber Alert concerning an “undocumented backdoor account” to the Diebold Global Election Management System, which programs the electronic ballots for its touchscreen machines.

Georgia Secretary of State Cox was unconcerned. In 2005 or 2006, she doubled down on Diebold with a $15 million purchase of new electronic poll books, which (according to voters) would later fail in multiple locations.

Unlike Cox, the media and public had at this point begun to question the wisdom of continuing to use unverifiable voting machines. Here is a quote from a 2006 article in Savannah Now, a local Georgia publication:

At first, it was easy to brush aside complaints by small but noisy groups that e-voting invited vote-stealing.

…Avi Rubin, professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, says devices like Diebold’s can be rigged-- without detection.

“There are major flaws in the security design of the software,” said David Dill, a computer scientist at Stanford University in Southern California.

In June, The Brennan Center for Justice, a non- partisan New York think tank, said systems like Georgia’s “pose a real danger to the integrity of… state… elections.” 

This was the year that a team of computer security researchers published a report finding that “touchscreen voting machines made by the notably litigious vendor Diebold were vulnerable to ‘extremely serious attacks.’ The researchers were so afraid of being sued by Diebold… that they broke with longstanding practice and didn’t tell the company about their findings before publishing.”

The same year, a Diebold whistleblower named Chris Hood spoke to RFK Jr. about the 2002 Georgia election. “Hood wondered why Diebold, the world’s third-largest seller of ATMs, had been awarded the [Georgia] contract. The company had barely completed its acquisition of Global Election Systems, a voting-machine firm that owned the technology Diebold was promising to sell Georgia. And its bid was the highest among nine competing vendors. Whispers within the company hinted that a fix was in.”

Hood claimed that, in late July, to speed deployment of the new machines, [former Georgia Secretary of State] Cox quietly signed an agreement with Diebold that effectively privatized Georgia’s entire electoral system. The company [Diebold] was authorized to put together ballots, program machines and train poll workers across the state-- all without any official supervision.”

Hood reported that in mid-August, Diebold’s president, Bob Urosevich, personally came to Georgia from Texas to distribute a software “patch” for the voting machines. He said they were “told that it was intended to fix the clock in the system, which it didn’t do… The curious thing is the “very swift, covert way this was done... It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state.”

According to Hood, “Diebold employees altered software in some 5,000 machines in DeKalb and Fulton counties-- the state’s largest Democratic strongholds.”

In 2006, the Georgia legislature considered a bill that would at least have required the addition of a paper audit trail to the paperless voting machines themselves. But the bill was defeated after Cox’s appointee, Georgia Elections Director Kathy Rogers, objected to it.

Several months later, Rogers took a job with Diebold.

Meanwhile, Cox pursued an unsuccessful run for governor, and Karen Handel won the election to succeed her as Secretary of State.

During her campaign, Handel had promised to make Georgia elections verifiable with a paper audit trail. But once in office, Handel instead defended and defeated a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s unverifiable voting machines. When the Georgia Supreme Court ruled in Handel’s favor, she “praised the Georgia Supreme Court ruling and claimed that ‘Georgia has the most secure elections in the nation…’”

Plaintiffs later discovered that Handel “had taken about $25,000 in campaign contributions from employees and family members connected with [Diebold’s] lobbyist, Massey & Bowers”

…In 2007, a team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania conducted a security evaluation of ES&S optical scanners and ES&S touchscreen voting machines and published a report (the “Everest report”), stating that they had found “numerous exploitable vulnerabilities in nearly every component of the ES&S system… These vulnerabilities enable attacks that could alter or forge precinct results, install corrupt firmware, and erase audit records.”

In 2010, the Department of Justice forced ES&S to sell Diebold because the combined company accounted for more than 70% of US election equipment, violating anti-trust laws. In a settlement with the DOJ, Diebold purportedly dissolved, and its assets were split between ES&S and a Canadian company called Dominion Voting.

The following year, an interim election board in Venango County, Pennsylvania commissioned a forensic audit of the county’s 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting systems. The court, county Commissioners, and ES&S eventually shut down the audit (with ES&S threatening legal action against the board members and scientists). But an interim report stated that the scientists had found “evidence that the system was repeatedly accessed by an unidentified remote computer, for lengthy periods of time, on “multiple occasions.”

The same year [2011], a laboratory run by the Department of Energy showed how Diebold voting machines-- used by a third of all voters nationwide (at the time), including Georgia-- could be hacked via remote control.


By then, Georgia’s governor, Sonny Perdue, had appointed Brian Kemp to the office of Secretary of State, replacing Handel who had left office to pursue an unsuccessful bid for governor.

Kemp expressed no interest in replacing Georgia’s paperless machines, and the national media gave him little grief.

But that has begun to change courtesy of the Georgia 6th District special election in 2017. On March 3, 2017, a little more than a month before the primary, Politico and other national news outlets reported that the FBI was investigating a breach at Georgia’s Center for Election Systems at Kennesaw State University.”

And a few weeks later, equipment “used to check-in voters at the polls”--  including a “flash card with a voter list”--  was stolen from a parked car.

A concerned national election integrity advocate, Marilyn Marks, filed a lawsuit to compel Kemp to use hand marked paper ballots (counted on optical scanners) in the race. But Georgia Secretary of State Kemp swiftly defeated it on a procedural technicality (sovereign immunity), declaring that the machines are “safe and accurate.”

Kemp assured voters that Georgia’s voting machines could not be hacked because they aren’t connected to the internet. But he omitted to mention that all voting machines, including those in Georgia, must receive programming before each election from centralized election management systems that can and often do connect to the internet.

Kemp also omitted to mention that Georgia uses a single flash drive to upload its election results from a central tabulator to an online Election Night Reporting System and then reinserts the same flash drive into the same central tabulator for the next round of results. Thus, if the flash drive becomes infected with malware from the online reporting system, it could spread the malware to the central tabulator and change the results from each polling place as they are uploaded.

Here are some tidbits about Karen Handel from the article’s August 2018 update:

As for Karen Handel, who is up for reelection this year*, she has yet to hold an in person town hall. But she did make time to oppose birthright citizenship in a telephonic town hall last year.

She has also made the top ten list of candidates to whom the Koch Brothers have donated money in 2018.

Recently, in the wake of the Trump administration’s decision to separate immigrant children from their parents at the border, it was Karen Handel who tried to silence Representative Ted Lieu’s audio on the House floor of children crying as they were ripped away from their parents.

And about Brian Kemp:

In August 2016, Secretary of State Kemp refused help from the Department of Homeland Security to secure its systems.


UPDATE: Valley Girl here:

Lucy MacBath has defeated the odious Karen Handel in GA-06.

As for Brian Kemp, may he rot in Hell. I have read and bookmarked articles about this slimeball and his doings for ages, including many recent ones. I’m hoping to highlight the most relevant ones in a future post.

DCCC Failure/Lucy McBath Victory

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%. Ossoff's candidacy-- or at least the therory of it had set the national Democratic base on fire. Money flooded into Ossoff's online account and he raised $23,600,861.14, compared to Handel's $4,555,808.76. Outside spending was also through the roof-- for both sides. Trump's America First PAC spent $1.6 million. The DCCC spent around $5 million. Pelosi's SuperPAC sept $1.2 million. Ryan's SuperPAC spent around $3.5 million. The NRCC spent around $2.5 million.

Eyes wide open, Blue America endorsed him. Soon after, I wrote:

The vetting process for Jon Ossoff was shorter than normal for a Blue America candidate. I never met him in person and spent a couple of hours on the phone with him over 3 calls. He wrote a guest post for DWT. He checked out OK. And, no he wasn't going to be the next Pramila Jayapal, Alan Grayson, Ted Lieu, Elizabeth Warren or Raul Grijalva. But he was't going to be a Blue Dog or New Dem and his instincts were pretty good across the whole spectrum of issues we talk with our potential endorsees about. He's pro-choice and opposes discrimination based on all the things conservatives use as excuses to demonize people. On economic issues... he checked out OK, as good as you're going to get in the South, at least as good as his mentors, John Lewis and Hank Johnson. As for the other Democratic congressman in Georgia, David Scott... Ossoff is ten-thousand times better. Find me a more progressive Democrat in the South (in Congress) than Jon Ossoff; I can't think of one. I suppose if it wasn't a winnable special election that could significantly put a check on Trump's legislative agenda, we might have dragged it out longer before endorsing Ossoff. But he really is good enough and under the circumstances, absolutely good enough.

Bernie was more discerning and never did go down to Georgia to help. Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, he said "Some Democrats are progressive and some Democrats are not." Pressed about whether or not Ossoff is a progressive, he, in the words of the WSJ, demurred. "I don’t know."

As his campaign came under the total control of the DCCC I started having second thoughts about the endorsement-- and regretting it. It wasn’t even that he started inching inextricably towards the center really fast, as much as something else I smelled. The DCCC moved in immediately and took over with their crooked money-sucking consultants. Everything I started seeing coming out of the Ossoff campaign started looking bad to me-- the multiple e-mails with no content everyday was an immediate give-away. When I complained, they took me off their mailing list. Every time I asked Jon substantive policy questions for follow-up posts, he wouldn’t respond. By the time he said he opposed single payer, I realized I’d been had by another establishment suck-up. But I generally held my tongue and hoped he’d win just for the message it would send to Republicans wavering in their support for the Ryan-Trump agenda. That was fucked up of me. Because there was another message an Ossoff victory would have sent, one the media would have crowed about endlessly-- how the Democratic Party can only win with centrist candidates who don’t have campaigns based on strong values. "Maybe," I wrote, "Ossoff can now go off and join Jason Kander in whatever he’s doing to push backward centrism on unsuspecting Democrats."

Ro Khanna was kinder: "Until we take a risk as a party in offering a bold economic platform, we're not going to break through in some of these elections. When you try to target things to a lowest common denominator, you run the risk of not having an inspiring message." MoveOn's Anna Galland also grew frustrated with the DCCC Republican-lite approach they saddled Ossoff with: "In the closing weeks of the race, Ossoff and the DCCC missed an opportunity to make Republicans’ attack on health care the key issue, and instead attempted to portray Ossoff as a centrist, focusing on cutting spending and coming out [in] opposition to Medicare for All. This approach did not prove a recipe for electoral success. Democrats will not win back power merely by serving as an alternative to Trump and Republicans."

This morning, the woman who beat Ossoff, wrote that "After carefully reviewing all of the election results data, it is clear that I came up a bit short on Tuesday. Congratulations to Representative-Elect Lucy McBath and I send her only good thoughts and much prayer for the journey that lies ahead for her." These are the results she was referring to:

McBath won on a more progressive agenda than Ossoff's. She wasn't inauthentic or wishy-washy, pulled in different directions by DCCC consultants and staffers dangling millions of dollars. No one would accuse her of being a Republican-lite candidate. Voters seemed to appreciate it.



McBath was vastly outspent by Handel-- around $8 million to just over a million. The DCCC kicked in $134,000, a drop in the bucket, although Bloomberg's Everytown for Gun Safety PACs spent $4 million on the race.

Nationally, the intensity of the feelings for Ossoff and McBath were similar, although Ossoff had far more focussed attention. McBath, after all, was just one candidate of over a 100 who people were excited about. In the district, though... why did McBath win where Ossoff failed? The wave? The anti-Red wave had already begun when Ossoff ran. If anything it had dissipated slightly by last week. The Trump effect? He may seem more horrible now than he did in 2017, but not enough so to move more voters. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I think the most important factor differentiating the two campaigns is the authenticity factor. Whatever authenticity Ossoff had-- and having talked to him early on, I can vouch that he did have some-- was killed by the DCCC's overbearing, albeit well-meaning, involvement. By the time they get their hooks into a candidate, the candidate is worthless mush, never more than the lesser of two evils, the DCCC guiding principle. Was that worth all that DCCC money and "expertise?" Ossoff may have been elected without them. McBath was.

2017, A Hell Bound Train Of A Year (Part 10) Republican Words As Windows To Their Souls. Round 3

-by Noah

Except 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? Any or all of these things are possible. The cause doesn’t really matter. Only the soulless result matters.

Here’s Round 3 of things that Republicans actually said in 2017. You just can’t make this stuff up. It’s who, and what, they are.

1. Attorney Marc Kasowitz: Kasowitz is a longtime lawyer for Señor Trumpanzee. Back in April, Bill O’Reilly had finally been booted from FOX “News” for an amount of serial sexual harassment that was too much even for them. FOX was, and probably still is, a petri dish for sexual harassment, but Bill-O’s escapades had gone way too public and had become too expensive in more ways than one. Advertisers were leaving in droves. Already, Roger Ailes had been tossed for the same thing. Rupert Murdoch’s sons were gaining more say about things at FOX and Ailes was no longer there to protect O’Reilly. His “Sell by” date was up and it was long past time to remove the putrid rotting goods from the store.

But, none of that mattered to Kasowitz. To Kasowitz, Bill-O had done no wrong. Bill-O’s end at FOX “News” was all the result of a “liberal conspiracy.”

Bill O’Reilly has been subjected to a brutal campaign of character assassination that is unprecedented in post-McCarthyist America. This law firm has uncovered evidence that the smear campaign is orchestrated by far-left organizations bent on destroying O’Reilly for political and financial reasons.

In Trump and Bill O’Reilly, Marc Kasowitz has the best clients; matched bookends of lunacy. I love the first eleven words of the above quote. In addition, I note the use of two of O’Reilly’s nightly standard, clichéd tools of commentary “smear’ and “far-left.” As for “character assassination,” well, don’t you need character first, if it’s going to be assassinated?

Never the less, most Republicans yelled and belched along the same lines about O’Loofah boy’s “character” being smeared, but, then these are the same people that nominated and voted for President Pussy Grabber. Was O’Loofah smeared? No. He is who he is and he has proven it repeatedly. His lack of decency simply zoomed past its sky high tipping point. Hey, It’s not like anyone accused him of murdering 300 people and running a pedophile ring out of a pizza place.

Back in Boston in the 1970s, Bill-O was known for, among other things, viewing the city’s school busing crisis through a pair of racist lenses. But, that’s probably what Rupert Murdoch liked about him in the first place. O’Reilly always was perfect lead-in for Sean Hannity, but, Murdoch need not have worried. FOX had a whole stable of replacement wackos already in house. Had Harvey Weinstein been a Republican, he would have been a natural for the job. Instead, the Murdochs had to settle for a smarmy pole-dancing retread called Tucker Carlson.

Once O’Reilly had been yanked from the big chair of pomposity, all FOX staffers were ordered to undergo sensitivity training. Think about that. Think about a white supremacist like Sean Insanity in a sensitivity training class. Think about a simpleton like Steve Doocy trying vainly to get his miniscule brain around the concept. Think about what the hell FOX “News” might even consider to be sensitivity! I imagine it to be something along the lines of a Grand Wizard learning to say thank you to the minority worker who washed his hood.

2. White House Asylum Faker Donald J. Trump: There isn’t much else to say about this treasonous assclown, this week. So, Let’s just go straight to the quote:

No collusion. No collusion!

Trumpanzee says this one so much that it’s now obvious that they will be the last words he ever utters. They are the equivalent of O.J. Simpson saying that he will “find the real killers.

In one of my dreams about Trump, he is standing before a firing squad, having been found guilty of treason. When asked if he has any “last words”, he sputters out “No collusion. No collusion! These words will end up on his gravestone. Have you ever wondered if he knows what they mean? Warning to the gravestone carver: Don’t expect to be paid.

3. Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert: Louie Gohmert is commonly called “the dumbest of all House members.” That makes you single digit IQ dumb. But, it’s more than that. Gohmert’s grain of sand-sized brain has led him to believe that, had Hillary Clinton ended up as president, she would have put him in jail because he brands himself as a Christian. Also, when Judge Roy Moore held his last rally (In a barn. How perfect!), there was Louie Gohmert on the stage at Moore’s side. Yep, he’s another Christian who doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with pedophilia. So, maybe he’s right. Maybe he would end up in jail, but not for being a Christian, per se.

I’ve never been able to do an end of the year review without mentioning a quote or two by Louie “the bestiality guy” Gohmert. Each time, I wonder how long he will be around to quote. After all Michele Bachmann is gone, at least for now. But, Gohmert sticks around like filthy sidewalk gum on your shoe. That’s because Gohmert represents a congressional district in Texas, our biggest nut state. He truly does represent them. He is them. They are him. In Texas, Gohmert probably finished at the top of his high school class. Yeah, I know it’s hard to imagine that such a dullard made it past the 5th grade, let alone how he found his way home every afternoon without arrows painted on the sidewalk.

It’s also hard to pick just one quote from the mind of Gohmert. Someday, someone might write a “Little Red Book Of Gohmert Quotations.” May it’ll be me. Anyway, here’s my choice for this year. It’s vintage conspiracy theorist Gohmert plying his scrambled moonbat “thoughts” on the FOX Business Channel. It represents Gohmert’s twisted view that the violence in Charlottesville, VA that erupted out of the Confederate statue removal issue was all due to a conspiracy by Democrats:

Well, this has been stirred up, and I think the Democrats- I mean this needs an investigation. And the president, or through him the Attorney General can appoint an independent council- this is so political. This is being driven by forces of evil that are beyond what normal people can think about. How do you have instances of people with KKK shirts and Black Lives Matter shirts getting off the same bus? I mean somebody’s stoking this…

When the FOX Business host says “So that’s your claim?” Gohmert replies:

No, no it’s not my claim. I’m telling you there are witnesses out there.

Yeah. Something’s out there alright. Out to lunch. Which is it, Louie? In Gohmert’s mind, people from both sides were, somehow, able to peacefully ride on the same bus, and then break out in violence once they got off the bus. To Batshit Crazy Louie, the whole thing was a plot, hatched by Democrats, including Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer to make white supremacists look bad. After all, didn’t Herr Trump himself say they were “very fine people?” And, what in Gohmert’s short-circuited mind tells him that only external forces can make white supremacists look bad? They are bad by nature, but not to Gohmert and like-minded republicans like Trump. To Gohmert, Nazis need defending.

Note to Louie: One of your “very fine people” plunged a car into the crowd and killed a woman, yet you use the whole incident to whine and promote Republican crackpot “theories.” You need treatment, asap.

Gohmert’s conspiracy theory illustrates a basic problem with today’s Republican Party. Angry older white men are dying off as a percentage of the total population. The demographics of the country are changing and not in the Republican Party’s favor. Hence, their desire to place limitations on which citizens can vote, and, to defend and appeal to any groups they see as voters who will support them, including Nazis. That Nazi beliefs dovetail nicely with core Republican beliefs is a bonus. For decades, they’ve tried to be a little quiet about it. Now, they can’t afford even a grain of subtlety. They need Nazi votes and they have no problem merging with virulent white supremacy groups to get them.

4. Tony Perkins, Professional Bigot: Here’s professional bigot Tony Perkins of the notorious hate group, Family Research Council, as he celebrated Senor Trumpanzee’s attempt to ban transgender soldiers from serving our country. This is a very sick man, a malignant tumor growing in our society.

The military has never been and should never be used as a vehicle to advance civil rights, political correctness, or workplace fairness.

Yeah, like when President Ike Eisenhower sent those troops to Little Rock in 1959 to assure the integration of the city’s schools. Can’t have that now, can we Tony. Fuck you! And, I’d like to see you say the same thing to those skeletal survivors at Auschwitz when Ike sent our troops there at the end of WW2. Where do Republicans get these people?

5. Georgia Rep. Karen Handel: Handel represents Georgia’s 6th Congressional district in the House of Representatives. Well, at least that is her job description. Here’s Handel in her debate with Democrat Jon Ossoff:

I do not support a livable wage.

Georgia’s current minimum wage is a viciously mean $5.15 an hour. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. According to M.I.T.’s Living Wage Calculator, the minimum wage for Georgia’s 6th District should be $12.01. All minimum wages are sociopathically out of date, in many cases by decades. http://livingwage.mit.edu/states/13/locations Handel won the race and is now part of Speaker Paul Ryan’s team of warriors in the war against the middle and working classes. The people in Georgia’s 6th District voted for low wages for themselves and tax cuts for the rich. What’s that they say about keep them poor and keep them stupid? The Republican Party crushed their 1956 platform into the dirt long ago.

This concludes the 2017, A Hell Bound Year In Review series. Let’s all hope that 2018 brings better news for America and the rest of civilization. Here’s also hoping that there is a 2019.

1. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2017/12/2017-in-review-hell-bound-train-of-year.html

2. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2017/12/2017-hell-bound-train-of-year-part-2.html

3. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2017/12/2017-hell-bound-train-of-year-part-3.html

4. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2017/12/2017-hell-bound-train-part-4-look-at.html

5. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2017/12/2017-in-review-hell-bound-train-of-year_31.html

6. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2018/01/2017-in-review-hell-bound-train-of-year.html

7. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2018/01/2017-hell-bound-train-of-year-part-7-is.html

8. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2018/01/2017-hell-bound-train-of-year-part-8.html

Election Day In Georgia's 6th District-- The End Of The Trumpanzee Agenda?

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. About 140,000 people have already voted-- a gargantuan number which favors Ossoff.

Ossoff has a 15-point lead among self-described early voters in the Opinion Savvy poll, a 13-point lead in a poll from The Trafalgar Group, a 14-point lead in a SurveyUSA poll conducted for WXIA-TV in Atlanta and a 9-point lead in a WSB-TV/Landmark Communications poll. Then there is the Atlanta Journal Constitution poll, the only live-caller poll, where Ossoff led by 31 points among early voters.

The key to winning these kinds of races is field-- something the DCCC opposes, since none of their crooked staffers can funnel money into their own pockets-- but, thankfully, Ossoff has poured millions of dollars “into an unprecedented ground game to turn out new voters and those who haven’t voted in non-presidential elections previously.” If that reporting is accurate, he’ll win.

GA-06 voters are divided on Trump-- 50% approve and 50% disapprove. Tom Cole (R-OK), former chair of the NRCC told the NY Times that “first and foremost, this is a referendum on the Trump presidency. The stakes here are not just for the House, the stakes are for the Trump presidency.” But there’s another important factor voters will be using today: TrumpCare, which divides the 2 campaigns and which the voters oppose.

The GOP is in a bad situation. If Handel wins, all she did was win a deep red district that Tom Price won last year by 23 points-- and at a cost of over $40 million. Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin wrote that “Republicans, weighed down by Mr. Trump’s growing unpopularity, must demonstrate they can separate themselves from the president enough to hold suburban districts that only now are becoming battlegrounds.”

The DCCC hacks they spoke with for their piece emphasized that a win by Ossoff will help the DCCC recruit more candidates. That’s something that should scare all progressives, since DCCC recruitment-- led by 2 conservatives, multimillionaire New Dem Denny Heck (WA) and wretched Rahm Emanuel protégée Blue Dog Cheri Bustos (IL)-- means wealthy self-funders, “ex”-Republicans, corrupt careerists and, first and foremost, dull conservatives who will take orders from leadership and not rock the corporate, donor-driven boat.

Republicans, weighed down by Mr. Trump’s growing unpopularity, must demonstrate they can separate themselves from the president enough to hold suburban districts that only now are becoming battlegrounds.

…An outright win in Georgia would serve as validation of the party’s overall strategy. Democrats have been recruiting aggressively in Republican-leaning seats-- including in Michigan, Illinois and New Jersey-- and party officials expect a wave of new challengers to announce their candidacies after the start of the next fund-raising quarter in July.

The stakes are highest for Republicans, who have held the district since the Carter administration without much of a challenge to speak of. Ms. Handel, the well-known former board chairwoman of the state’s most populous county, Fulton, and also a former Georgia secretary of state, is facing Jon Ossoff, a 30-year-old Democrat and former congressional aide who does not even live in the district.

“It’s a race that we have to win,” said Georgia State Senator Brandon Beach, a Republican whose district includes part of the terrain being fought on here.

Republican officials worry that if Mr. Ossoff wins, it would send a resounding statement about the intensity of the backlash to Mr. Trump, prompting incumbents to think twice about running for re-election, slowing fund-raising and, most significantly, further imperiling their already-stalemated legislative agenda.

“It’s not just symbolic-- we really can’t afford to lose any seats at this point,” said Representative Tom Rooney, Republican of Florida, noting that “the factions” among congressional Republicans make their majorities more tenuous in practice than they may seem on paper.

In a district that was once nobody’s idea of “swing,” the parties themselves have elevated the stakes. The two candidates and outside groups have now spent more than $51 million.

Republican Party leaders thought having total control of Washington would end the gridlock of the Obama years. But with lawmakers unable to put a single piece of significant legislation on Mr. Trump’s desk and the president threatening the party with his unceasing Twitter eruptions and intervention in the investigation surrounding his campaign, Republicans fear that losing in Georgia may hasten the sort of every-man-for-himself acts of self-preservation that typically do not come this early in an election cycle.

And if vulnerable lawmakers turn inward, that could make passing controversial legislation, like an overhaul of the health care or tax system, even more difficult.

Such a vicious cycle, retrenchment ensuring inaction, could only further demoralize grass-roots Republicans, deteriorating the party’s standing even more. That malaise has already hobbled Republicans in Georgia, forcing national super PACs to spend heavily to aid Ms. Handel while Mr. Ossoff has raised over $24 million on his own, mainly with support from small donors.

“We actually have to have victories,” Mr. Rooney said.

Notably, Mr. Ossoff has made opposition to the American Health Care Act, the health care bill approved by House Republicans last month, a signature issue of his campaign. And while Mr. Ossoff has run on a centrist message over all, Democrats have run advertisements targeting liberal-leaning voters, especially African-Americans, with appeals to send a message to Mr. Trump: Republicans on Saturday circulated a picture of a truck parked in the district with a sign reading, “Hold Donald Trump Accountable, Vote Tuesday, June 20.”

…On the Democratic side, elected officials and party strategists say that Mr. Ossoff’s campaign has already served as a galvanizing force, spurring small donors into action and focusing the attention of voters and activists on the battle for the House. The notion that Mr. Price’s once-safe seat could be in play, strategists said, has helped encourage Democrats in other conservative-leaning seats.

Should Mr. Ossoff win, it could spur another wave of Democratic candidates to run in challenging districts.

Citing Georgia as a model, Andy Kim, a former national security official in the Obama administration, said he is likely to enter the race against Representative Tom MacArthur of New Jersey, who vaulted into the national spotlight as an architect of the House Republicans’ health care bill.

“We want that same energy,” Mr. Kim said. “We want people around the country to focus in and say: This an opportunity for us to push back and hold MacArthur accountable for his actions.”

In Arizona, Randy Friese, a trauma surgeon turned state representative, said he has watched the Georgia race as he weighs a challenge to Senator Jeff Flake. Mr. Friese, who said he is leaning toward running, noted that Mr. Ossoff’s message-- casting him largely as a nonpartisan candidate-- had resonated with both Democrats and independent voters.

“Voters need people who have the political courage to stand up for their values and not just bend to the will of the party,” said Mr. Friese, who entered politics after treating Representative Gabrielle Giffords for a near-fatal gunshot wound in 2011.

Among the Democrats likely to announce campaigns in conservative-leaning districts, according to party strategists, are Matt Longjohn, a physician who is the Y.M.C.A.’s national health officer, against Representative Fred Upton of Michigan; Brendan Kelly, the St. Clair County, Ill., state’s attorney, against Representative Mike Bost; and Nancy Soderberg, a former ambassador, against Representative Ron DeSantis of Florida. Elissa Slotkin, a former Defense Department official, is moving toward a campaign against Representative Mike Bishop of Michigan.

All would be running in seats that tilt clearly toward the Republicans and where Democrats typically struggle to enlist strong candidates.

And in California, Gil Cisneros, a Navy veteran who won $266 million in the lottery, has been meeting with strategists about a challenge to Representative Ed Royce, according to Democrats familiar with his preparations. Mr. Royce has already drawn a promising Democratic opponent in Mai Khanh Tran, a pediatrician and former refugee.

Democratic officials argue that even a razor-thin defeat for Mr. Ossoff should be taken as an encouraging sign, but the party is under pressure to win. House Democrats only reluctantly, and minimally, competed in special elections earlier in the year in Kansas and Montana. But they poured millions into this race, even as Mr. Ossoff largely ran from the party’s agenda and leadership.

“My concern is that we might raise the bar too much, the expectations,” said Representative Michael E. Capuano, a Massachusetts Democrat. “Look guys, these are seats we shouldn’t even be playing in.”

Republicans are not even bothering to play down the consequences of losing.

“We all know this is a harbinger of national politics,” Mr. Perdue said, “and the world is looking, the nation is looking.”

Wow, enough identity politics in there to make you want to puke your guts up. Early today, I saw some well intentioned woman candidate from Houston babbling on twitter that the solution to the country’s problems was getting more women into Congress. I was happy to point out that though the best voting record in the House belongs to a woman-- Pramila Jayapal (100%)-- the worst Democrat, by far, also belongs to a woman-- Blue Dog nightmare Kyrsten Sinema (10.0%). How about kf we look at the quality of candidates instead of the identity politics bullshit?

Nate Cohn did a fascinating piece for the NY Times yesterday that listed the 15 best educated districts in the country-- best educated in terms of college degrees-- and correlated the list with congressional representation. All but 2 are represented by Democrats and of the two represented by Republicans-- GA-06 and VA-10-- only one was won by Trump last year, GA-06, very narrowly. They’re the only districts where at least half the adults have degrees. “The list,” he wrote, “includes plenty of caricatures of the liberal elite: ‘limousine liberals’; ‘Hollywood liberals’; ‘latte liberals’; ‘San Francisco liberals’; ‘Massachusetts liberals’; and the ‘D.C. establishment.’ It also includes Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, where a special election on Tuesday has been held up as the first big litmus test of Democratic strength in the Trump era. Education explains why the race is competitive at all.” The list includes some of the most committed and effective progressives in Congress-- Ted Lieu, Ro Khanna, Jerry Nadler, Pramila Jayapal, Jamie Raskin and Katherine Clark. It would be nice seeing a Georgia district on a list like that!

The district has been staunchly Republican for a generation. Mitt Romney won it by 23 percentage points in 2012-- larger than his margin of victory in Alabama or Kansas.

But President Trump won it by just 1.5 points, and Jon Ossoff, a 30-year-old Democrat, won 48.1 percent of the vote in a big field in the first round of voting. Of the 15 best-educated districts in the country, this is the only one Mr. Trump won in November.

…If Mr. Ossoff wins the election, Republicans can argue-- with some credibility-- that Georgia’s Sixth was a particularly ripe opportunity for Democrats at a time when Mr. Trump’s ratings among college-educated voters have sunk into the low 30s.

But even if he loses, Mr. Ossoff’s strong performance has already demonstrated that Republicans in well-educated but traditionally conservative areas now shoulder the burden of Mr. Trump’s weak performance. It suggests that previously safe Republican incumbents in Orange County, Calif., or the suburbs of Dallas and Houston could face serious challenges next November. And most important, a close race in Georgia’s Sixth suggests that control of the House is in play, regardless of which candidate comes out on top.

I couldn’t find much on the group that started running an ugly and divisive negative ad campaign on Sunday-- only on Fox News-- blaming Democrats and Ossoff for Steve Scalise’s shooting. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the Principled PAC “bills itself as a group that only supports ‘principled conservatives who have the backbone to stand up to the Washington elite’ but is a bit player in the political world and has faced staunch criticism from conservative leaders.” Ossoff called on Handel to ask the group to take down the ad. Her campaign issued a statement saying the group “should be ashamed” but refused to ask them to take down the ad. The PAC appears to be a scam operation and Laura Ingraham once urged people NOT to heed their call to contribute to her own short-lived Senate campaign through them, calling them trolls. The only records I was able to find for the Principled PAC previous to this buy was some small contributions to some fringe candidates no one has ever heard of and a $5,000 contribution to the North Carolina Gun Rights PAC last year. Kind of ironic.

Today will come down to turnout. I’m betting Ossoff’s gamble on investing heavily in field and GOTV will give him the edge. We’ll know in a few hours.

Will Voters Oust Republicans From Power In 2018? Bigly!

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. In many safe Republican seats Trump’s approval is good enough to not be a threat to Republican incumbents. But even in those areas there are reasons to believe that Trump’s support is finally starting to crack.

That AP poll we mentioned yesterday, has some overwhelmingly troubling-- if you’re Republican-- headlines. For one thing, 65% of American voters said Señor Trumpanzee doesn't have much or even any respect for the country's democratic institutions and traditions. That 65% includes nearly a third of Republicans or Republican-leaning independents. A shockingly low 35% of voters approve of the job he's doing. And a quarter of Republican voters agree he’s doing a bad job. A quarter isn’t enough to shake the resolve of incumbents in deep red districts. But swing district Republicans are in full panic mode. Here’s where it gets problematic for Republicans: about 50% of whites without a college degree-- one of Trump's most loyal demographic groups-- still approve of the job the president is doing but that's down 8 percentage points since AP’s March poll. And every survey indicates that approval for congressional Republicans is being driven down by Trump’s taint-- although a case could be made that it’s their stink that’s ruining it for Trump, especially Paul Ryan’s lifelong dream to destroy the American healthcare system. By embracing his notions and accepting them as “TrumpCare”-- despite how starkly they differ from TRump’s campaign promises-- Trump has destroyed his own credibility and is destroying the hope many of his own supporters had in him.

Look at Jonathan Swan’s report for Axios about the fallout from Trump’s comments about how Ryan’s healthcare package is “mean.” Those “private” comment about TrumpCare being “mean” is “having a lingering, and potentially devastating, effect on his credibility among House Republicans. Members are still talking about Trump's comment, and their frustration that he'd throw them under the bus is likely to damage his ability to negotiate on major items like infrastructure and tax reform.”

In the House Ways & Means Committee markup today, there was discussion among a couple of Dems and Republican members, with a Democrat saying:

“See, we told you your health care bill was mean. Now the president agrees with us.”

A source familiar with the conversation said the Democrat was touching on an issue that remains "hot" among Republicans.

A number of members of Congress have told Axios that Trump and Pence lobbied the bill like nothing they'd ever seen, using superlatives such as calling it a "great bill."

Members who Trump urged to take a risk and pass the bill are now seeing him turn his back on them. One member said Trump was on the phone urging people to support it, and "for him to turn around and do this, it's stunning. I can't believe it.”

One of Vox’s healthcare policy experts, Sarah Kliff, reported on Thursday that the GOP desire to keep the country from knowing what’s in their healthcare bill is becoming more obvious every day “as the Senate plots out a secretive path toward Obamacare repeal— and top White House officials (including the president) consistently lie about what the House bill actually does.”

“The extreme secrecy is a situation without precedent, at least in creating health care law” writes Julie Rovner, who has covered health care politics since 1986 and is arguably the dean of the DC health care press corps.

I don’t have quite as long of a tenure as Rovner, but I have been covering health care politics since Democrats began debating the Affordable Care Act in 2009. It’s become obvious to me, particularly this week, that Republicans plan to move more quickly and less deliberatively than Democrats did in drafting the Affordable Care Act. They intend to do this despite repeatedly and angrily criticizing the Affordable Care Act for being moved too quickly and with too little deliberation.

My biggest concern isn’t the hypocrisy; there is plenty of that in Washington. It’s that the process will lead to devastating results for millions of Americans who won’t know to speak up until the damage is done. So far, the few details that have leaked out paint a picture of a bill sure to cover millions fewer people and raise costs on those with preexisting conditions.

The plan is expected to be far-reaching, potentially bringing lifetime limits back to employer-sponsored coverage, which could mean a death sentence for some chronically ill patients who exhaust their insurance benefits.

Senate Republicans do not appear to be focused on carefully crafting policy that reflects a more conservative, free-market attempt at achieving President Donald Trump’s goals of covering every American at lower cost. They’re focused on passing something, by whatever means necessary. That may come back to haunt them electorally, but not after millions suffer the consequences.

…[T]he Senate is running a remarkably closed process. There are no committee hearings. There are no floor speeches defending the policy provisions of the bill. Senate Majority Mitch McConnell instead has assembled an ad hoc working group to hash out the details of Obamacare repeal in private meetings.

The biggest priority seems to be just passing a bill, regardless of what the bill actually looks like. Tierney Sneed, a reporter for Talking Points Memo, recently asked Sen. Orrin Hatch, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, whether it was important to get the bill out a few days before the vote, so the public could review its provisions.

His response was telling. “Well, I think we’re not worried so much about that as we are getting it together so we can get a majority to vote for it,” he said.

Vice President Mike Pence visited the Health and Human Services Department on Tuesday and delivered a speech to the agency’s employees.

“Now I know this room is filled with men and women who care deeply about bringing high-quality health care to every American,” Pence said. “Rest assured, Donald Trump wants the exact same thing.”

Trump is not acting that way, though. He held a Rose Garden ceremony last month to laud a bill that would cause 23 million Americans to lose coverage-- a bill he praised as “incredibly well-crafted.”

This is now a consistent pattern from top Trump officials, who have decided that their strategy to hide the Republican health care plan will be to not tell the truth about what it actually does.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price has appeared on national television and claimed that Americans will “absolutely not” lose Medicaid coverage under the House-passed bill. Two separate, independent analyses of the AHCA find this isn’t true. Millions of Medicaid enrollees would lose coverage under that bill.

Trump himself gave an interview to CBS in April where he said that people with preexisting conditions would be protected under the AHCA. They won’t be: At the time he gave that interview, the bill had been amended to allow states to opt out of the requirement to charge people with preexisting conditions the same prices as healthy enrollees, a move that will almost certainly price some patients out of coverage.

Trump said that deductibles will go down under the Republican plan. Nonpartisan analysis expects deductibles will go up.

The White House has decided to deal with an unpopular bill by refusing to acknowledge the parts of the bill that the public doesn’t like. When asked in interviews about the expected loss in coverage or cuts to Medicaid, administration officials simply act as if they don’t exist.

At some point, of course, this strategy will catch up with Republicans. Promises that “every American” will receive “high-quality health care” will ring false when millions lose their health insurance. Once a law passes, it’s awfully hard to hide the consequences.

Republicans might lose elections if they pass the American Health Care Act. But that will only happen after people suffer the consequences of a rushed bill considered quickly with little public debate.

These are people like 62-year-old Cliff Hoskins, a retired coal miner who lives in rural Kentucky. He used to be on Medicaid expansion-- he described it as the best insurance he ever had-- and now has coverage through the ACA marketplace.

His out-of-pocket premium would likely triple under key Republican health care provisions.

“It’s going to at least take half, if not all, of my Social Security,” Hoskins says. “If I had to pay the full amount, that would not be good. That would put you back in poverty.”

…Voters can oust Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections if they don’t like the health care plan. But for people like Cliff… the damage will already be done. The election is secondary to [his] ability to get health insurance coverage. This is the most damaging part of the lack of public discourse around the Republican repeal efforts: There are millions of real lives at stake that could be hurt. These people would suffer the consequences that will happen much faster and matter much more than any election.

Did you see that list this morning of 70-odd Republican incumbents who could lose their seats in a 5 point swing away from Trump’s 2016 performance in the 2018 midterms? A 5 point swing looks like a very conservative estimate of what’s likely to happen. Trump is going to drown his party in a lake of raw sewage in a way that it could be a decade before they recover. Why is Karen Handel polling so poorly in a deep red Georgia district, even after Ryan and Trump directed tens of million of dollars into media buys? National Republicans blame her miserable debate performance. People in her campaign whisper about the toxicity of Trump and Ryan, a deadly association in the current political climate.

Friday, Alex Isenstadt reported that “the GOP is bracing for the prospect of a loss in Tuesday’s Georgia’s special election that could have far-reaching implications for President Donald Trump and his party’s fortunes in 2018.”

While no one is willing to publicly write off Handel’s chances just yet-- Republicans stress that she remains competitive and point to robust GOP early voting figures-- several private surveys taken over the last few weeks show Republican nominee Karen Handel trending downward, with one private party poll showing 30-year-old Democrat Jon Ossoff opening up a more than five-point lead in the Republican-oriented, suburban Atlanta seat.

“If we’re losing upper middle class, suburban seats in the South to a 30-year-old progressive liberal, we would be foolish not to be deeply concerned about the possibility that would exist for a tidal wave election for Democrats in 2018,” said Chip Lake, a Georgia-based Republican strategist and former Capitol Hill chief of staff.

…Regardless of the outcome, Republicans appear to be taking a lesson from the contest: the president’s support is diminishing in some of the key districts that will determine the House’s balance of power-- places like Georgia’s 6th District, which is filled with the upper-income and highly-educated suburban voters and was never especially enamored of the president in the first place.

“It defines the kind of district where Trump struggles,” said Whit Ayres, a Handel pollster. “He was never particularly popular, and he hasn’t gotten more so since he was inaugurated.”

Ayres said that Republican voters were more energized now than in April, but argued that Trump's unpopularity in the district was the primary reason why the race was still close.

…With the election still days away, some Republicans are already pointing fingers at Handel— a tried-and-true Washington tactic. In the White House, some officials have privately derided her as a frequent candidate for public office who isn’t the kind of fresh face necessary to win. Others are second-guessing her campaign team. During a Sunday appearance on “The Georgia Gang,” a public affairs TV show, longtime party hand and conservative commentator Phil Kent criticized the campaign’s decision to hold a fundraiser instead of a public rally with Pence.

Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, a former NRCC chairman, said he was nervous about the Georgia race but felt confident the party had done all it could. The special election, he said, was a reflection of a challenging national environment the GOP was coming to terms with.

“No one here is whistling past the political graveyard and we understand this cycle will be intense, and that it will test our hold on the majority," he said. "We may or may not hold the majority, but it won't be for lack of effort.”

GA-06 Homestretch... Ossoff Takes The Lead As Trump And Ryan Pour In More Dark Money

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. Democrat Jonathan Ossoff has raised a shocking $23,600,861.14 while the generally disliked Handel has only come up with $519,726.40.

Without daily financial transfusions from Republican leadership she wouldn't have a competitive campaign. They even sent Trump to Atlanta to raise money for her, as well as Ryan, Pence and Price. Ryan's SuperPAC had spent $2,948,888.85 smearing Ossoff by Thursday and the NRCC kicked in a similar amount-- $2,556,761.24-- strictly for negative-- entirely dishonest-- ads. There's so little positive stuff to say about Handel that the NRCC only spent $295,378.55 on positive ads. Ryan's SuperPAC, the #1 source of spending in the race, put up just $110,933.19 for positive ads backing Handel. She's a dreadful candidate and they know it and her positions-- "I do not favor a livable wage"-- are unpopular. So it's all smear, smear, smear.

As Georgia's Secretary of State, Handel was once pretending to be a proponent of "transparency in government." Kira Lerner of Think Progress explained it like this yesterday: "Fast forward eight and a half years, through failed campaigns for governor and for the Senate, Handel is now the Republican candidate taking on fundraising-juggernaut Jon Ossoff in the special election for Georgia’s sixth congressional seat. As individual donors pour money in, trying to flip the historically solid conservative district to Ossoff, Handel is relying heavily on the same kind of spending she so recently fought against." Handel's campaign is almost entirely fueled by Dark Money. One anti-dark money group's executive director pointed out that "the hypocrisy is striking. Karen Handel was for a ban on secret political spending, but now that it’s clear she can’t compete with Jon Ossoff and his small-dollar, grassroots donors, her campaign is almost completely reliant on special interest money from groups that refuse to disclose their donors."

Friday the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published the results of a brand new poll that confirm what every other poll is saying-- a very tight race with Ossoff leading slightly. Except in this new poll it's actually a little better than slightly, probably because Handel did so horribly in the debate and because Trump and Ryan are so toxic (and so associated with her campaign). The poll, which has a margin of error of 4, shows Ossoff leading her 51-44%. Her downward momentum is palpable after a series of polls in the last 2 months showing a much closer contest.

The findings show Ossoff has an enormous lead over Handel among women, leading 60-34. The Republican is beating Ossoff among male voters by a 52-41 margin. He has a solid advantage over Handel among younger voters, while she has a slim majority of voters who are over 65.

The conservative-leaning district has long been held by Republicans, and Ossoff has tried to appeal to both liberals infuriated with President Donald Trump and moderates and independents who typically vote for the GOP. Of those polled, 46 percent identified themselves as Republican or Republican leaning and 44 percent identified as Democrats or Democratic leaning.

He’s capturing about 13 percent of Republican voters and 50 percent of independents-- a crucial voting bloc that typically leans right in the state. It shows almost no cross-over on the flip side; only 3 percent of Democrats say they’re backing Handel. He gets support from 44 percent of white voters, a big number for a Democratic in Georgia.

The race is likely to come down to get out the vote efforts on the ground. If Ossoff was swayed by the DCCC he won't have a robust GOTV effort and he'll lose, the way all their candidates do. If his team is running their own campaign they'll do what Jimmy Gomez just did in CA-34 and turn out the vote on Tuesday the same way Gomez just did against his rich conservative opponent. Early voting has been amazing so far, which makes me think Ossoff isn't letting the DCCC push him around.

Almost 63,000 people had already voted in the contest by Wednesday morning, easily surpassing the first round of early voting in April when about 55,000 people cast ballots. For the runoff, early voting ends June 16 and the total may stretch to 100,000.

...More than $36 million has already been spent on the race so far, according to a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis, making the contest the most expensive in the history of the U.S. House. Voters in the 6th District-- and beyond-- have been inundated with TV ads, and signs promoting the candidates have dotted much of the metro area.

As a result, GOP strategist Chip Lake predicted a more than 200,000-voter turnout this time around, while others have said it will go higher. If so, that would be incredible for a district that boasts almost 530,000 registered voters and includes parts of three of metro Atlanta’s most populous counties-- Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton.

“That’s a big, big turnout in a special election in the hot, hot summer anywhere,” Lake said. “But I don’t know that it necessarily favors one candidate over another. We just have to spend some time and figure out who these people are.”

Adding to the suspense, nearly 8,000 voters have been added to the district’s voting rolls since the April special election. Experts say those are likely to be “high propensity” voters-- meaning they are more likely to turn out to vote than skip the race.

“The federal judge’s ruling to reopen voter registration was a game changer for the Ossoff campaign because it allowed him to hopefully expand the electorate,” Democratic strategist Tharon Johnson said.

As part of an ongoing lawsuit over how Georgia handles voter registration ahead of federal runoff elections, a judge in early May extended registration in the district through May 21.

Johnson said the early voting numbers should favor Ossoff because Democrats traditionally do a better job of getting their voters to the early voting sites.

“Both campaigns have put a lot of resources into turning out their voters early before they go away for the summer vacation,” Johnson said. “I truly believe a majority of voters in the 6th Congressional District have made up their mind who to vote for.”

Wayne and Maureen Darling are among them. Wayne is 68. Maureen is 69. Both are retired. Both voted for Ossoff.

“A counter to Donald Trump is probably the biggest one,” said Wayne Darling, when asked what issues motivated him. Ossoff, he added, could bring political change “more so than Karen, who’s just been part of election after election.”

If you want to help counter Trump-- and Ryan-- you can still help Ossoff's Get Out the Vote efforts by contributing. All you have to do is tap on the Blue America ActBlue thermometer just above on the right and find Jonathan Ossoff on the page it takes you to. And remember, there's no such thing as a contribution that's too small, at least not from Democrats.