#GA6th special election today (and some digressions thereof)

It's been the Democrat's to lose, and it looks like he's going to lose it.

-- The polling starts to tip away:

This is the first legit poll that has Handel ahead in over a month. Has her up 2. https://t.co/9Hr3QwzLGX

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) June 19, 2017

-- The candidate's mistakes get amplified.

The night before the election, Jon Ossoff has banned a publication critical of his candidacy — the Free Beacon — from an event. That’s not OK! It’s not OK when Republicans do it, and it’s not OK when Democrats do it. Which is why it’s not OK that Karen Handel banned ThinkProgress from an event, either. Both of these candidates need 1) a refresher on The First Amendment, 2) thicker skin, and 3) to go to their rooms and sit in their shame. We expect this sort of thing from the GOP, but not from the Dems. Not cool, bro.

Tonight @thinkprogress has been banned from Handel's event and @FreeBeacon from Ossoff's. Bipartisanship!

— Hayes Brown (@HayesBrown) June 20, 2017

This was long after Ossoff outed himself as an opponent of single-payer, which makes him the kind of Democrat a lot of people who used to vote for Democrats can no longer vote for.

If he loses, it's all our fault, as we know if we just listen to the establishment.  That is, when it isn't Jill Stein's fault.  (This chronic obsession of the Donkeys compels me to make the previous link the subject of its own post in the very near future.)  But something fundamental is revealed here: Democrats seem to believe that it will be easier to convince Republicans to switch over than it would be to capture the votes they have lost, or the voters who don't.  Some of that premise is supported by this data.

-- The ridiculous amount of money being spent in this contest -- over $26 million, the most expensive Congressional election ever -- should demonstrate clearly that campaign finance reporting only means something to professional political whores consultants and those who crave access to them.  But it won't.  What it will demonstrate to those who are running for office in 2018: toe the neoliberal line and they'll make it rain for you.  Step outside the orthodoxy and they won't.  And Ossoff's strategy, ladies and gentlemen, is what passes for Democrat orthodoxy, especially in the purple-hued suburbs; you know, the places where Rahm Emanuel and Mike Collier say they have to win.

Bucking the left, Ossoff said in an interview that he would not support raising income taxes, even for the wealthy, and opposed “any move” toward a single-payer health care system. Attacked by Republicans for his ties to national liberals, Ossoff said he had not yet given “an ounce of thought” to whether he would vote for Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, in a future ballot for speaker.

Not going to be down with these kind of Democrats personally.

And I'm not of the opinion that unity for its own sake is going to work out well, particularly with people like Joy Reid at the megaphone.  It's long past time for Bernie Sanders to take the hint and split away from the Blues, but he understands that's what he'll go down in history as: a divider and not a uniter or even a revolutionary.  He's unlikely to live, in vigor and and in health, long enough to see the fruits of an electoral harvest a people's party may produce in the elections to come.

So he soldiers on within a system he does not care for, to the scorn of those who have no intention of modifying their behavior based on his urging.  Because that is the lesser of two evils done to his legacy.  Must be very unsatisfying.

I don't hold the respect I once did for Sanders because of his compromising on defense spending -- Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report pulls no punches, calling Sanders an 'imperialist pig' over his war lust -- guns, and even women's reproductive freedom as a means to an electoral end himself, but his lack of courage to do anything beyond simply criticize Trump and the Democrats, and not take the action the country needs at this time, has sort of sealed the deal for me.  Without me, that is.

-- It may all be moot for Ossoff the Blue Dog anyway, if Brad Friedman's latest tale of electronic machine voting woe is accurate.

In advance of Tuesday's (special election), Politico Magazine's Kim Zetter offers an absolutely chilling bombshell of a report headlined "Will the Georgia Special Election Get Hacked?"  She reports that gigabytes of unsecured data -- including passwords for e-voting system central tabulators, voter registration databases and much more -- were kept on a wholly unsecured web server, potentially for years, at Kennesaw State University's Center for Election Systems.

-- Are we still more concerned about the Russians hacking elections than we are about votes being suppressed via photo ID?  If so, why?

-- A bright spot: in the next Supreme Court term, perhaps we'll be able to get these asinine gerrymanders addressed.  This Slate piece by Mark Joseph Stern cogently reveals Anthony Kennedy as the swing vote the Democrats are hoping for, as well as the connection to the two First Amendment cases the SCOTUS decided yesterday.  It's an intriguing legal argument for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing.

But a favorable decision next year by the Supremes ordering redrawn maps probably won't be implemented until the 2019 Texas legislative session, too late for some of these Lone Star so-called libruls clogging themselves into the 2018 March primary in hopes of being the Chosen One, by both the voters and the DNC/DCCC/D$CC.

Enduring that mediocrity fortunately seems like a lifetime away.