But even if Ossoff does pull one off in June, it will be hard to paint his victory as any kind of progressive triumph. The candidate himself seems earnest, and (to borrow a phrase) likable enough for someone who has clearly had his eye on a political career for quite a while. As a filmmaker, Ossoff's targets have included ”Nigeria's Fake Doctors," Big Tobacco (in Kenya), and corruption in Mozambique—all worthy, and all very far away. As a candidate, he's been forthright in defense of Planned Parenthood—which might actually help against Handel, who resigned from the Susan G. Komen foundation after the group reversed a decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. And he's nobody's idea of a blue dog. But with campaign ads arguing ”both parties in Washington waste too much of your money," Ossoff is running as a pragmatic centrist, not a political revolutionary.
That doesn't bother MoveOn.org, whose 15,000 Georgia members voted overwhelmingly to endorse him. ”He's talking in a way that connects with voters in his district," Matt Blizek, the group's electoral field director, told me. ”This was a pretty pro-Clinton district," he said. Ossoff, for better and worse, is definitely a candidate a Clinton supporter could love.
Just as an Ossoff victory would represent a repudiation of Trump, but not our broken politics, his failure to pull off an upset yesterday has little to tell us about the prospects for bolder candidates with more audacious agendas. A winning smile and the ability to avoid controversy will never be enough to turn this country around. Cutting off the school-to-prison pipeline, breaking the corporate stranglehold on our politics and Big Oil's steady suffocation of our planet, ending the rationing of health care and educational opportunity by income and the police targeting of young men by race—all require a lot more than tinkering around the edges. There are Democrats, right now, who could lead those fights, like Rob Quist in Montana, Tom Perriello in Virginia, and Heath Mello in Omaha, struggling to raise a fraction of the funds behind Ossoff.
It may have been fun to watch, but despite all the money, and all the media attention, the battle for Georgia's Sixth District, however entertaining, was never more than an expensive sideshow.
