Chris Matthews laments hidden Trump vote and wonders 'what the hell' Jon Ossoff was selling

Like a lot of people, Chris Matthews wants to know why Jon Ossoff was running in the GA06 special election. He wandered into town, was buoyed by a tidal wave of out-of-state left-wing cash, revealed himself to be a guy without a message, and promptly lost. In a way, he was a bit like Hillary Clinton in that no one is entirely sure there was a reason for his candidacy. Here's what Matthews had to say:

"It seems to me that there was a lot of progressive hype about a guy who wasn't running as a progressive, which is another interesting twist to this. He was running on basically, well let's get together and be normal or something. I don't know what the hell he was selling. He wasn't selling much."

There's a contingent within the Democrat party that thinks the more progressive they get, the more they'll win

This is yet another variation on the "Bernie woulda won" argument that we've discussed before. There's a contingent within the Democrat party that thinks the more progressive they get, the more they'll win. Let's not disabuse them of that notion. They want to think that? More power to 'em. It will only help conservatives. Matthews is a little more on track with his belief that there's a hidden Trump vote out there that isn't reflected in the polling. That certainly seems to be the case, although we could argue about whether it's being "missed" or simply "misrepresented." There's been a long a long history of agenda-pushing pollsters who fudged numbers or phrased questions in a way that was designed to suppress or encourage voter turnout. They'd create the perception that one candidate is doomed, or one is dominating, and that perception would become reality. For a variety of reasons, it doesn't seem to be working anymore and it keeps blowing up in pollsters' faces. By the way, kudos to Chris Matthews - and I mean this sincerely - for pointing out that Dems would be doing backflips had Ossoff won. He's not buying the whole "it's no big deal" line that's emerged after the Democrat defeat.

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Ossoff loss hit them like a ton of bricks

"If it went for Ossoff, you would be jumping up and down, saying how great a victory it was, right? Come on, you're smiling. I know you're smiling. I know how people play politics. If you lose, you're ‘oh, no, big thing.' If you win, ‘yay!' I mean, which is it?"

Clearly, it was a huge deal. It was the most expensive House race in U.S. history. Dems threw over $30 million at it. You don't squander that kind of cash on a middling, unimportant, campaign. Any left-wing pundit who tries to pretend it was just business-as-usual so "no biggie," should be ignored on a permanent basis. There's a reason their party is in panic mode and, while they refuse to admit the true nature of their problems, it's clear that the Ossoff loss hit them like a ton of bricks.