Lost Amongst The Election

From Politico:

"It shouldn't have come as a surprise, since Republicans have lost 20 of the past 29 House special elections, dating back to January 2003. And in perhaps the most worrisome aspect of the trend, the GOP lost its fifth consecutive competitive special election in Republican-friendly territory."

After Election Thoughts

Well, of the 4 big elections (NJ gov, Virginia Gov, House election in Cali and NY) dems lost the govs and won the special elections. The house special election in NY the dems never should have won but thanks to the crazy turf war going on in the repub party, the dem won. Not since the civil war has NY-23 seen a dem house rep.

The repubs are using this as a referendum on the dems. After reading exit polls, it seems that it was not. 58% in NJ and 48% in Virginia said it was not about Obama. The repubs are using this as a weapon but don't be scared. There is a year before the midterm elections and if health care gets passed and if Obama can get those unemployment numbers down, then dems can turn around their approval rating (which by chance is still much better than repubs.)

But dems do need to get stuff done.

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.