Usually local elections in Georgia are about as surprising as peaches rotting after being left in a hot car.

Most of the state has voted conservative for as long as anyone can remember, so I guess it should be no surprise that Karen Handel took Georgia's eighth congressional district a few weeks back.

I still think the unusually attentive nation was just as shocked as I was when Jon Ossoff lost. He made it further in the race than a left leaning candidate would normally. Trump had only won the district by a percent, but Ossoff lost by a whopping four percent. It seemed like the district’s tides were turning in the national presidential election, so what went wrong?

Karen Handel’s game was weak. Her attack ad was merely a group of diverse people from California saying that they liked Ossoff. She threw around Nancy Pelosi’s name, as if her campaign was not also being heavily funded by super PACs tied to Washington insiders. The ad relied heavily on coded racism and the old trope that Georgians “don’t like them outsiders”. After a presidential election full of blustering about Washington insiders, Handel sashayed by with just as many corporate donors as Ossoff, who also had more grassroots support.

How did this charismatic, bright-eyed Democrat lose? After all, Trump won District 8 by a narrow margin. It is commonly theorized that Georgia voters simply could not tolerate any big change, but perhaps it was the opposite problem that culminated in Ossoff’s near miss. Maybe progressive liberal voters who were expected to be jumping at the chance to vote for Ossoff needed more than just a centrist candidate.

Don’t get me wrong, Ossoff fought honorably. He seems like a good guy and I hope he has better luck in the future. It was refreshing to see a Georgia district almost flip for the first time in ages. That said, I cannot help but wonder what may have happened if Ossoff had been more overtly progressive. For instance, why was he so wary of single payer healthcare and taxing the rich?

In this wild new America that is more bipartisan than ever, many liberals are growing tired of meeting the other side half way when they continue to careen further and further to the right. It is difficult to side with someone who is championing things that will directly harm you. Unity sounds beautiful until your sick child is in danger of losing the health insurance that keeps them alive.

For the people who stand to lose the most from the rise of the ultra-conservative alt-right and the Trump regime, the risks are too high for milquetoast promises of progressive policy. As Americans brace to lose family and friends to ICE raids, lack of affordable healthcare, and ever increasing gun violence, the promises of establishment Democrats are not as reassuring as they need to be.

The moral of the story seems to be that while the voting majority of Georgia seems to be dead set on keeping the state far-right for eternity, a mildly progressive candidate may have an even lower chance of success than a staunch one.