It took 12 months for the vaunted #Resistance to claim its first electoral victory. The win came in Virginia with Ralph Northam, who voted for George W. Bush twice and said he'd work with Trump if elected. The next victory came a month later with Doug Jones, who accepted President Trump's White House invite just after taking office and said he won't be a reliable vote for Democrats. Then came last week's Pennsylvania victory for Conor Lamb, who opened his campaign shooting an AR-15 and won over Trump voters.
The reality is that despite the early talk of the "big, diverse, and ferocious" resistance movement rallied together by Trump's homophobic, racist, and sexist administration, its only victories have come with straight white men who have taken a decidedly soft stance towards Trump.
Last week's Pennsylvania results should give Democrats hoping to construct a "blue wave" this November a roadmap for how to win. Lamb's campaign created a message aimed at voters in his district, which is filled by the type of Democrat the national party lost in 2016. He maintained support for gun rights even after the politically polarizing Parkland tragedy, did his best to appeal to pro-life voters, and supported Trump's steel tariffs even as they were being blasted by party leaders.
Lamb also kept his focus on the voters. He didn't give a single interview to MSNBC or CNN before the election despite the significant attention the race was getting. On the ground, national reporters who descended on western Pennsylvania weren't told where Lamb would be, which was usually knocking on doors away from cameras or questions.
Now, Lamb's strategy to keep the national press at arm's-length could have been because he wanted to avoid answering questions altogether. It didn't go too well, for example, when he attempted to explain how he was against a 20-week abortion ban despite a stated belief that "life begins at conception."
No matter what the reason was for Lamb's decision to stay off cable news networks, it allowed him to present himself as a much different candidate than Jon Ossoff, who built up a national profile on his way to election defeat last June.
In the week before Ossoff's election alone the Al Jazeera documentarian appeared on MSNBC five times, including election eve appearances on Nicolle Wallace's Deadline Whitehouse and Lawrence O'Donnell's The Last Word—two favorites of the #Resistance class. On the morning of his election Ossoff went on both CNN and MSNBC, appearances that likely did nothing to shift the election needle.
Ossoff's campaign lacked a local focus. On top of the fact that he didn't live in the district, the staffer I dealt with most as I attempted to cover the race was from Minnesota and previously worked as the DCCC's "Great Lakes Regional Press Secretary."
Ossoff's nationalized campaign to "Make Trump Furious" effectively turned out Democratic voters, who were fired up by the prospect of being the first district to rebuke Trump. But it failed to convince enough Republicans and independents—even ones lukewarm on Trump—that he was the candidate for them. In fact, the full-court press by Hollywood liberals and national Democrats in Georgia's sixth may have helped rally Republicans behind Karen Handel, the eventual winner.
Answering press inquiries for Lamb's campaign was Abby Nassif Murphy, a local who was showcased by Salena Zito of the Washington Examiner as Lamb's secret weapon when it came to running the type of campaign that would win over her neighbors—and the campaign had nothing to do with making Trump furious.
"One of my strengths is we have leadership by local people," Lamb said in a CNN interview the morning after the election. Asked what the election results said about Trump's current standing, Lamb fought off attempts to treat his race as a bellwether.
"Trump is a popular person here," Lamb said. "I know people voted for the president and voted for me and I thank them for hearing me out. I'm looking forward to fulfilling my promise of actually representing them."
Lamb's ability to win over Trump voters was predicted back in January by John Fetterman, the mayor of a town just outside of Pennsylvania's 18th, who called Lamb the "perfect candidate for the district."
"If you had to create a candidate that had the best chance as a Democrat to flip that district, I really believe that it's Conor Lamb," Fetterman said in an interview earlier this year.
Fetterman also predicted Lamb would have a lasting power absent from candidates like Ossoff, whose only chance to win was an election backed with over $30 million and still came short.
"If Conor is able to flip the district, I really believe he's a durable Democrat," Fetterman said. "If Ossoff managed to win, he'd be finished the next cycle."
Picking the "perfect candidate" won't be as easy elsewhere in the country as it was for Democrats with Lamb, who was selected as the candidate by a party committee rather than a primary.
Not only is a challenge to convince Democratic primary voters to select the candidate with cross-party appeal, but candidates with like Lamb don't exist everywhere.
Take for example Virginia's 5th district, a Democrat target with a candidate running who, like Lamb was, is backed by a Democratic effort to get military veterans running for office. The candidate, R.D. Huffstetler, is like Lamb young and articulate with a sparkling résumé that begins with military service. Huffstetler, however, is not the complete package: He just moved into the state less than two years ago and lacks the local ties that proved crucial for Lamb.
But it appears Democrats are starting to get the message that the national attention that comes along with being an appealing Democratic candidate during the era of #Resistance may not actually help at the ballot box.
Politico reports this week that Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke, running to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas, wants to be a "little more Conor Lamb, a little less Jon Ossoff" and thinks the national attention "may hurt" his campaign.
O'Rourke might want to rethink his recent appearance on "Pod Save America," then.