i saw his volunteers everywhere throughout this suburban district. but based on my reporting brian at the end of the day republican voters came home even the suburbanites who aren t big fans of president trump they re still supportive gopped agenda items like overhauling the affordable care act cutting taxes that s why they came out for karen handel. we should mention, robert, they enforced some team discipline. they noted the number of republicans who sat out the primary in effect and they put out a plea to get off the bench, get in the game and come help. it appears to have made the difference tonight. you know what else made the difference, brian i think we got to pay attention to it this. handel did not embrace president trump everybody knows that but who did she go after? she targeted politicly house minority nancy pelosi. so do the superpac aligned with
but the truth is republicans came home tonight whether they supported the president or not they supported their party. and that should strike fear in the heart of democrats going into 18. this must mean to want there is a legislationive director in the trump white house saying i ve got a plan. here is what our rollout is going to be and we re going to build off the trivg victory, right. well there is some sense of that, yes. i was speaking with two senior white house officials just before we came on air tonight, brian. one of them rather isn t that correctly tweeted, sad or texted at me sad, exclamation point regard to the ossoff results. the other one pointed out to me that this buys republicans some time. it gives them a little bit of momentum, not a tremendous amount of momentum but a little bit of momentum heading into a stretch in which they need it. they need to get something done on taxes, would like to get something done on health care
us now msnbc contributor and new york times political roert jeremy peters, dona edwards, norm dw dwresman from the state of ph.d. david joly former republican congressman from the great state of florida. welcome to you all. jeremy. you get the fast ball, a little high but still over the plate. the deep thoughtful question to start off tonight what does any of this have to do with donald trump what does any of this have to do with 2018. obviously with this much money spent in a single congressional seat, the highest amount of money ever for a race, like this, the results are going to be somewhat distorted and people will extrapolate more than they should from it, brian. but it is a wakeup call for democrats in the sense they have still not figured out a message that works against donald trump. it is not just enough to be against trump.
but you write beautifully for a newspaper and this is your realm. how can that be the outcome of this process and the greater question to you, what is the net out flow from congress signed by the president by the end of 2017? moves on health care to you think? i think this ultimately ends up going nowhere for one big reason and that s because donald trump is rapidly losing interest in it, brian. he understands how politically t toxic it is. he thought this bill was quote unquote mean. this is not something he wants his legacy tarnished with when he could be moving on to aspects of his agenda he s far more interested in, tax reform and infrastructure. i think one likely outcome is that the senate passes something, 50 votes.
house speaker paul ryan. you see pelosi who was an issue for republicans when she swept the house in 2010, she is returning as an issue on the republican side. they may believe ahead of 2018 in spite of all the ties against them, if they can run against pelosi and the democratic agenda they can maybe skap anden in districts like this. well that s interesting i m sure the national democrats are watching this among other things tonight. garrett i was watching you this evening. for a while there, your headquarters had the energy. i could hear chants and cheers when for a while ossoff was up. then he wasn t. yeah, brian they were ridiculously fired up here at this. it didn t look like any other house race i had seen. hundreds of people incredibly pumped up for this. they have not had a democrat represent them in their lifetimes many younger voters. they thought this was the chance. one of the highlights of ossoff s concession speech was