Reprint: The Washington Post – By Paul Kane – Photo caption: © David Goldman/AP – Jon Ossoff, a 30-year-old Democrat running for Congress in Georgia’s traditionally conservative 6th Congressional District, holds pamphlets as he campaigns in Sandy Springs, Ga. on May 11, 2017. –

Democrats are heading into the homestretch of three special elections over the next month amid a national frenzy over the investigation into the possible connections of President Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian interference in the election.

Yet in all three races, Democrats have made a tactical decision not to turn the contests into a referendum on Trump’s alleged scandals and instead are focusing on policy decisions by the president and congressional Republicans.

Democratic strategists privately say that this might be the recurring theme through the November 2018 midterm elections. Democrats say that they have learned a lesson from the 2016 elections, in which House Democratic candidates relentlessly focused their campaigns on trying to tie Republican incumbents to the personal scandals of Trump or some of his more outlandish policy statements.

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