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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