There’s an old say­ing that close only counts in horse­shoes and hand gren­ades, and that’s cer­tainly how Demo­crats must feel after los­ing their third and fourth at­tempts of the year to wrestle away Re­pub­lic­an-held seats in spe­cial con­gres­sion­al elec­tions. In fair­ness, the first two shouldn’t fully count against them since the Demo­crat­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee was pretty much forced (or shamed) by the lib­er­al net­roots to play in the Kan­sas 4th and Montana at-large con­tests. Party pros saw both races as ex­tremely chal­len­ging giv­en their largely rur­al pop­u­la­tions, which have been the toughest dis­tricts for Demo­crats to crack over the last dec­ade. Tues­day’s spe­cial elec­tion in Geor­gia’s 6th Dis­trict was the fight Demo­crats hoped to win, even though it’s a Re­pub­lic­an strong­hold. Mitt Rom­ney in 2012 and Tom Price, who held the seat for 12 years, won this up­scale At­lanta sub­urb by two dozen points, but Don­ald Trump beat Hil­lary Clin­ton by only a point and a half there in Novem­ber. The not-so-secret sauce for Demo­crats is that polls show their party mem­bers are agit­ated and angry about Trump’s elec­tion,

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