So there’s been some interesting discussions of why Archie Purnell overperformed tonight while Jon Ossoff underperformed. There’s certainly something to the theory that the high visibility Ossoff campaign mobilized GA-6 Republicans while the under-the-radar Purnell campaign left South Carolina Republicans demobilized.
But I would also recommend that everyone visit the web sites of the two candidates – which I just did for the first time. After spending just a few minutes on the Purnell web site, I can tell you exactly what his campaign message is. Archie Purnell (at least as he presents himself) is a guy who has had a successful career in corporate America who now wants to put that knowledge and experience to work for the ordinary person. And the reason he wants to do that (at least the reason he claims) is that despite his great success (for which he will remain eternally grateful) he is, at heart, a down-home South Carolinian who has never forgotten where he came from. And you know what – whether or not any of this is actually true (which I can’t judge from a web site) it comes across as authentic and believable.
I visited Jon Ossoff’s web site, and the only thing I got out of it was, “blah, blah, blah.” Empty talking points. Wonky policy discourse with no sense of passion or values. No sense whatsoever of who he really is, what motivates him, and why the voters of GA-6 should place their confidence in him. In other words, it has all the tell-tale signs of every crappy, losing consultant driven Democratic campaign that I’ve seen go down in flames over the past two decades.
Now, from what I have learned about Jon Ossoff, he seems like a decent enough guy. But he seems to have remained trapped in the Democratic insider bubble which is populated by people who have lost all ability to connect with and communicate with people outside that bubble.
There’s been a lot of debate over the past year about whether the Democrats need to “move to the left” or “stay to the center.” I am, admittedly, a Berniecrat to the core who believes that the failure of the Democratic Party to offer a viable progressive alternative to the Reagan Revolution has been a catastrophe for this country and for the party. But I also know that “moving to the left” is no magical formula for electoral success and that candidates do need to fit their districts.
But I also know that, regardless of the district and regardless of ideology, a candidate who fails to authentically convey why voters should place their confidence in the candidate is a candidate who will probably lose. Voters can smell prefabricated poll-tested political bs a million miles away, and they are tired of it. There’s a way to run authentically in a suburban district. There’s a way to run authentically in a rural district. There’s a way to run authentically as a progressive populist. There’s a way to run authentically as a centrist.
But as a long as the Democratic Party remains dominated by people who have lost the capacity to engage authentically with people outside the political bubble, the Democratic Party will continue to fail.