NY 23 Special Election Bad for Repubs

Back story for NY 23. There are 3 people running. A dem Bill Owens, a repub Dierdre Scozzafava, and an independent Doug Hoffman (conservative party). This district is pretty conservative but not staunchly conservative. The dem is not important. Its the repub versus the independent. The repub is a pretty liberal repub. Too liberal for Club for Growth (uber conservative organization) so they (along with Sara Palin and a couple other crazies) endorsed the independent. The moderate repubs in the party have endorsed Dierdre.

What this comes down to is this, if Doug wins it will empower the ultra conservatives within the repub party to demand more crazy-right repubs to run for office. It will, in essence, drag the party more to the right. This would be great for dems. Yes, they lose this one but they didn't have the seat to begin with.

This election could make it all the more harder for the republican party to seem more moderate. Repubs have lost the last two election cycles because of their extreme views and incompetance. This election will hopefully make the repub party shift more towards the right, becoming less palatable by the American public. Right now repubs are in the crapper with public opinion and this election will only further make them undigestable to mainstream America.

Gillibrand is the Freshman Senator from N.Y.

I like this pick a lot. There are several reasons why this is better than Kennedy. First, she has run a good campaign n '06 against a nasty repub opponent.  Why is that important. It is important to be able to raise lots of cash in a short time. It is also important to be able to run a campaign against a good opponent. Kennedy had done neither. (Kennedy even admitted to not voting half the time. That's horse sh@t)

The times writes "[Gillibrand] proved to be a formidable candidate, raising millions of dollars and assembling a campaign organization that aggressively exploited the personal and political baggage of her opponent, Representative John E. Sweeney, who frequently found himself on the defensive."

Cuomo would have been fine (Son of Mario), but it was important, I think to continue the legacy started by Hillary, that of being a woman. 

I think this is a great pick. Check out the article. 

Update: It gets better.

After talking to Kirsten Gillibrand, I am very happy to say that New York is poised to have its first U.S. Senator who supports marriage equality for same-sex couples,” Van Capelle said.

She also supports the full repeal of the federal DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) law, repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) and passage of legislation outlawing discrimination against transgender people. While we had a productive discussion about a whole range of LGBT concerns, I was particularly happy to hear where she stands on these issues.