Georgia on my (two) mind(s)... Preference & Prediction

 "Other arms reach out to me..." 

Apologies in advance for utilizing the same overused "Georgia On My Mind" cliché title used by everyone else opining on the Georgia election. But, to paraphrase Yossarian in Catch-22, "If everyone else is doing it, I'd be a damn fool to do anything else." 

We're less than a week until the Georgia Senate runoff. No telling how long before we know the results. The election will determine partisan control of the Senate and whether we will have a Divided Government or a Unified One Party Rule Democratic Government for the next two years. The Dividist prognosticates and the Dividist has preferences. Sometimes they align. Sometimes they don't. First our preference... 

The "Pelosi Problem" - If she could turn back time. [UPDATED]

UPDATED: 11/07/2018*

Mainstream media are calling it the "Pelosi Problem". Democrats have lost four out of four special elections since Donald Trump was sworn in as President.  A blue-on-blue political feeding frenzy has erupted as Democrats eat their own.  With the President rubbing salt in the wound, Nancy Pelosi is being blamed by some on the left.  Democratic desperation is palpable and the growing Progressive panic is not limited to the beltway political class.

When even the solid support of liberal entertainment industry icons turn on Nancy Pelosi, a political firewall has been breached. Pelosi lost Cher  ...

👏🏼.CONGRESSIONAL RACE IS NOT OLYMPICS,THERES NO MEDAL🥈FOR 2nd PLACE‼️I ADMIRE & RESPECT NANCY PELOSI,BUT IN“EVERY”RACE,GOP RUNS AGAINST HER🥀 pic.twitter.com/QX5I26Yl3s

— Cher (@cher) June 21, 2017

... and Cher may be right. Republican strategists credit invoking the specter of - Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House - as a cudgel keeping disgruntled Republicans in the fold and contributing to the GA-06 win. From CNN:

"Why the relentless focus on the Democratic congresswoman from San Francisco? It was at the heart of their strategy to turn out reliably Republican voters who might be queasy with Trump's first five months in office, but did not want to see Pelosi and national Democrats celebrate a marquee victory in their own backyard. Pelosi "consistently polls very unfavorably," said John Rogers, the executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee -- the House GOP's campaign arm. "I think in this instance it had a motivating effect for our voters on the turnout front."

Exhibit A: This right wing Super-Pac ad was one of several mining the Anti-Pelosi vein that saturated GA-06. It was effective and is exactly what we can expect to see in every contested district in 2018:

Dear Democrats - about that 2018 House election - Here's your silver lining playbook.

UPDATED*: 18-August-2017 

Democratic hopeful Jon Ossoff came close in his initial bid to win the reliably Republican Georgia 6th congressional district. He finished first in the April election with a large plurality over a fractured Republican field but failed to secure a majority. Ossoff will face faced and narrowly lost* to second place finisher Republican Karen Handel in a June 20 runoff. Promoted as a proxy for Democratic resistance to the Trump administration, the mixed results gave both parties plenty of "spin" space. Whether it was a victory, loss, moral victory, repudiation of President Donald Trump, bellwether for the 2018 midterms, GOP wakeup call, or some mix of all the above can and will be debated.

In the bigger scheme of things, it's just one district that should and probably will stayed* Republican. By itself GA-06 is not all that important. What is important - very important - is what happens in the 2018 midterms. Can Democrats can wrest majority control of the House of Representative from the GOP, restore divided government, and provide real oversight of the Trump administration?

On that score, the Dividist can show Democrats a silver lining around the dark cloud of 2016 and offer a ray of hope for 2018. But to explain it, we must first digress through a bit of history.