April 19, 2017

White House Press Secretary was in rare form today, spinning hard for his boss on the results of Georgia's primary yesterday.

In a district where Tom Price won by 21 points, Democrat Jon Ossoff came within 1.9 percent of winning outright, and now faces opponent Karen Handel in the June general election.

But Spicer really did try hard to spin a win into a loss. When asked whether or not Trump was spending too much political capital on a race that shouldn't be a tough one for Republicans, Spicer started spinning so hard the podium must still be dizzy.

"I thought some of the coverage was intriguing as I watched it," he said. "The Democrats went all-in on this race and spent over $8.3 million. They said on the record that their goal was to win this race."

"They lost, and the reaction has somewhat been you know, that they almost won. No, they lost," he insisted.

Um, well. No. They didn't. They won. They had a candidate in a dark red district who had other Democrats running, yet earned 48.1% of the vote. Said candidate was polling at about 43% pretty consistently in the days leading up to the election.

Overall, the 5 Democrats in the field of 18 candidates garnered 48.5% of the vote, with Republicans getting 50.5%, and independents pulling away 1%.

That is not a win for Republicans, and it is not a loss for Democrats. And as we've already established, money is not the only factor in play here.

Which brings me to the original question about Trump spending political capital. We hope he does, because Karen Handel's win is Trump's loss. He had a horse in the race (Bob Gray), and that horse lost to Handel by about 9 points or so. Those Trump supporters in that district are not going to instantly align behind a woman who is associated with mainstream Republicans.

Offhand, I'd say Republicans lost last night, and Dems won big. Even with "glitches" in their tabulation hardware.

Poor Sean. He's going to need something for the dizziness.

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