Hoffman Concedes

[WilliamK]

http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2009/...house-race.html

Hoffman has conceded in NY23. The R's had a moderate and popular incumbent who was a shoo-in. Then nationally prominent Republicans threw their weight behind a far right 3rd party candidate, energizing the wingnut base and effectively pushing the Republican incumbent out of the race. The result? Predominantly Republican NY 23 elected democrat Bill Owens to Congress today.

[Guest guest]

Guess Palin and Limbaugh are useful after all...

[Guest Guest]

http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2009/...house-race.html

Hoffman has conceded in NY23. The R's had a moderate and popular incumbent who was a shoo-in. Then nationally prominent Republicans threw their weight behind a far right 3rd party candidate, energizing the wingnut base and effectively pushing the Republican incumbent out of the race. The result? Predominantly Republican NY 23 elected democrat Bill Owens to Congress today.

Your anxiety is obvious this morning with your multiple postings attempting to downplay the huge rejection in Obama's attempted government takeover of our lives.

I'll give you a C+ in your pathetic attempts to spin your explanation for the Dems defeat.

[Guest Guest]

Your anxiety is obvious this morning with your multiple postings attempting to downplay the huge rejection in Obama's attempted government takeover of our lives.

I'll give you a C+ in your pathetic attempts to spin your explanation for the Dems defeat.

Yeah, it would be horrible if you looked at the facts.

Fact 1: For decades, Virginia has elected a governor of the opposite party of the President.

Fact 2: Corzine was unpopular for a variety of reasons, including his failure to lower taxes, his inability to communicate with the voters and even his car accident. He had low approval ratings before Obama was elected, and despite that managed to come within a few points of winning.

Fact 3: Exit polling showed that approximately 60% of voters said that their decision for governor had nothing to do with Obama. Of the other 40%, an equal number voted to express support as voted to express dissatisfaction.

Fact 4: Obama's approval rating is high in New Jersey.

Fact 5: Young people and African-Americans had low turnouts yesterday. If they had turned out, Corzine would have won.

Fact 6: The Democrats had a weak candidate in Virginia. He never caught on with the voters.

Fact 7: The Democrats just picked up a Congressional seat in upstate New York that had been Republican for decades. Of course, you'll ignore that, right?

I know you would like to spin this and everything else as a negative on Obama. But that does not square with the facts.

[Manscape]

Pitbull Sarah Palin.

http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/77/77...-mary_large.jpg

Typhoid Mary Mallon.

http://history1900s.about.com/od/1900s/a/typhoidmary.htm

[Bryan]

The spin and counterspin on this board is hilarious.

Just going to point out a few things.

1) Scozzafava was not the incumbent in NY23. It was a special election with no incumbent ("The R's had a moderate and popular incumbent who was a shoo-in"???). Why nobody mentioned that Scozzafava endorsed the Democrat after she dropped out of the race is anybody's guess. She was arguably to the political left of the Democrat in the race.

2) President Obama placed at least some importance on the NJ governor's race. If not, then he would not have spent time campaigning for Corzine. This is beyond obvious.

3) The tendency of Virginia to have a governor of the opposite party of the President is interesting and possibly relevant. The American people, it seems, like to see the parties check each other. Unified government is rare in the U.S.

4) With apologies to the spinmeisters, there's no gauging the impact of this election on President Obama's election chances. NY23 doesn't mean a whole lot. Virginia and New Jersey at least demonstrate that the GOP can still win elections. But if the election tells no story of the support for Barack Obama, national polling tells a different story. Obama's agenda is unpopular, and his personal popularity is gradually dropping as a result of that (also because of the weak economy).

My opinion? As things stand, Obama probably wins a second term. But he may have to learn to work with a slimmer congressional majority and may even lose a house of Congress or two before he's through in office. If his foreign policy continues to be a disaster (he has nothing to show except a Nobel Prize, as far as I can tell), then there is a chance the American people will turn him out of office after one term. The economy will also play a big role, but the public may remain patient with the president if that's the only big problem.

It is easy to see parallels between Obama and our two previous Democratic presidents. Obama so far resembles Jimmy Carter on foreign policy, but Bill Clinton on domestic policy (though well to the left of Clinton and with a more aggressive push for his agenda).

Obama aside, Congress really is a mess.

[WilliamK]

1) Scozzafava was not the incumbent in NY23. It was a special election with no incumbent ("The R's had a moderate and popular incumbent who was a shoo-in"???).

I stand corrected. Thanks for setting that straight.

Why nobody mentioned that Scozzafava endorsed the Democrat after she dropped out of the race is anybody's guess. She was arguably to the political left of the Democrat in the race.

What position does that favor? I suppose one could attribute the election result to the endorsement rather than to the rising intensity of the far right producing a candidate that moderate R's had trouble supporting. But as the latter effect may very well be the cause of the endorsement and the thing that gave it whatever effectiveness it may have had, it looks to me like both of those explanations support the same conclusion, which is that the increased influence of the far right lost this election for the R's. Do you have a third explanation in mind?

[Guest Guest]

I stand corrected. Thanks for setting that straight.

What position does that favor? I suppose one could attribute the election result to the endorsement rather than to the rising intensity of the far right producing a candidate that moderate R's had trouble supporting. But as the latter effect may very well be the cause of the endorsement and the thing that gave it whatever effectiveness it may have had, it looks to me like both of those explanations support the same conclusion, which is that the increased influence of the far right lost this election for the R's. Do you have a third explanation in mind?

The district is overwhelmingly Republican. The vote for the Democrat was not due to the endorsement but really due to normal Republicans not voting for the far right wing nut.

So hopefully, the Republican party will keep on supporting the wing nuts and end up in oblivion like the Whig Party did.

Thank you Republican wing nuts, the Democrat's party best hope.

[Bryan]

What position does that favor?

Scozzafava endorsing the Democrat, you mean? I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. If favors a number of interpretations. One, that the choice of Scozzafava was a blunder (though she shot herself in the foot in addition with some odd behavior during what there was of her campaign). The Democrats chose a moderate Democrat to run. That was smart. It comes down to the fact that the GOP just did not have a good candidate to run in NY23. Hoffman, for example, was susceptible to the charge of carpetbagging.

I suppose one could attribute the election result to the endorsement rather than to the rising intensity of the far right producing a candidate that moderate R's had trouble supporting.

Well, if one added the Scozzafava vote to the Hoffman vote then Hoffman should have won. Either liberals were voting for Scozzafava to begin with or her endorsement really did make a difference to Republican voters (possibly both, of course).

http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/20...zzafava-fading/

But as the latter effect may very well be the cause of the endorsement and the thing that gave it whatever effectiveness it may have had, it looks to me like both of those explanations support the same conclusion, which is that the increased influence of the far right lost this election for the R's. Do you have a third explanation in mind?

You can always arrange the evidence to support the conclusion that the influence of the far right lost the election. And I think it was undeniably a factor--but a small one. Does it make sense for the GOP to run a candidate to the left of the Democrat in a conservative district? No, it really doesn't. I think of the factors involved the most important is the one I've already pointed out: The GOP did not have a strong candidate to put forward. They could have taken Hoffman. But aside from being more conservative then either Scozzafava or Owens he had little in his favor. He was fairly low on the charisma scale, you could say. And a bit of a carpetbagger. But for all that he may have won if Scozzafava had demonstrated some party loyalty. The three percentage points separating them is a slim margin, after all.

We love to try to find the big trends in these types of races. But amidst the basics of having a good candidate, the signs of national political trends are faint.

[WilliamK]

Does it make sense for the GOP to run a candidate to the left of the Democrat in a conservative district? No, it really doesn't.

Sure it does, because there's more to it than that. Here are two reasons:

1. Scozzafava had name recognition.

2. That district isn't really all that conservative. Its right tilt appears to be driven mostly by fiscal and small-government conservatism. On social issues, it appears centrist, or possibly even a little left of center.

We love to try to find the big trends in these types of races. But amidst the basics of having a good candidate, the signs of national political trends are faint.

On that I agree. If the writing is on the wall, the wall must be covered from floor to ceiling with contradictory and barely legible scribbles.

[Bryan]

Sure it does, because there's more to it than that. Here are two reasons:

1. Scozzafava had name recognition.

2. That district isn't really all that conservative. Its right tilt appears to be driven mostly by fiscal and small-government conservatism. On social issues, it appears centrist, or possibly even a little left of center.

1) So does Michael Moore. That doesn't make him a good candidate for the GOP.

2) If the district isn't really all that conservative in the first place then what is the big deal with a Democrat winning it? If you meant all along to imply that NY23 was pretty much a RINO district you could have mentioned that in the OP.

On that I agree. If the writing is on the wall, the wall must be covered from floor to ceiling with contradictory and barely legible scribbles.

If you can find a national trend in the NY23 race then you can probably find every Roman Catholic saint in Saturday's cloud formations as well--obscured though they are with various puffs of water vapor.