http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...k-house-seat/2011/09/13/gIQAoos5QK_print.html Turner embraced us Tea Partiers. And he won. In New York City!
Democrats had a 3-1 voter registration edge there. Apparently it was a very Jewish district, there is no doubt that Obama's distancing himself from Netanyahu had an effect. Still, this election confirms what I have been saiyng for a long time- there is no real constituency that will switch from not voting Obama to voting Obama in 2012, but there are a number that are turning away from him.
He will bring Jerry Springer-like debate to the floor of the congress before his seat is eliminated in NY redistricting.
Nevertheless, this is a race they could have won. Weprin turned out to be an awful candidate, and the ground game was apparently not very good. Let's both hope the Democrats can step up their game next year.
I was mocking the words of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. This is a district that should NEVER, EVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES go to the GOP. And you’re deluding yourself if you think it flipped because the Democratic candidate was a jackass instead of a donkey.
There's that. I mean, a GOP win is a GOP win, but special elections are a beast unto its own, and it's not like the GOP or conservatism doesn't exist in NYC. Especially in the outer boroughs, you're going to have pockets of conservatism and the New York Republican Party does exist, and holds sway in the state house. It's just usually not the crazy brand of Republicanism that we get from the Red States.
It's ironic that one issue where Obama has shown some spine and not been Israel's complete lapdog appears to have hurt the Democrats here. On other hand on issues such as the economy, I can totally see why the Democrat lost given Obama's utter spinelessness.
You could also blame the Russians too. I think it's a simplistic analysis of the 9th CD. The Brooklyn portion of the district is way Jewish running down Ocean Parkway and Starret City is rather black. The Rockaways is really working class and diverse and Forrest Hills/Kew Gardens is about as mixed a bag of races, creeds, ages and income levels as you can get.
Yes, NY is the home of Rockefeller Republicans. The likes of Pataki and Guliani are laughed at by 'real' Republicans. the Republicans have fired a warning shot and won a seat they had no business winning. And in Western NY one of the reddest seats in NY went to a dem earlier this year. NY has to lose two seats in redistricting. I wonder which ones they will be? Hmmmmmm.
Also keep in mind:, Peter King is an R-NY from Long Island, and his witch-hunting ways (not to mention his past support for noble terrorists) fit with the other Republicans. I don't know why anyone is feigning surprise that an NY congressional seat went to the GOP.
Understatement of the year. The 9th is a +5 PVI district, so it's a moderately strong [D] district. There is currently only one district in the entire House with a higher Democratic PVI that is held by a Republican (IL 10th, which seems to like having a GOP rep while otherwise voting Dem). The last GOP rep from this district left office in 1923. Weiner had previously defeated Turner (the guy that just won) by a 61-39 margin. That's not even close to close. Given that the results of this were 54-46, this one swung hard. 15 points hard. So what was the cause of that big a flip? If you look at the Google "news" feed, you'd think... well, you'd think that news is dead in this country because no one is really offering anything other than bullshit "national implications" and other propaganda stories. God I hate the media.
I wouldn't think to long and hard about that one. But seriously, folks I'd like to see decent analysis, and I wonder about the connection between this race and the NY26th (IIRC), in which a long-time Republican seat went Democratic in a special election. But I guess actual analysis and reporting based on research is too much to ask now that "reporters" have come to rely on gasbags engaged in the spin business to fill their column inches.
NY9 and NY26 might as well be completely different planets. I don't think any logical connection could be drawn between the two.
Other than the folks in the district held their finger up to see which way the wind was blowing at that moment. Last spring was taking away the Medicare. Right now its jobs. Sheep.
Possibly, and if so, decent analysis would point that out. But you have a pretty similar situation: a long-held Republican seat going Democratic, vs. a long-held Democratic seat going Republican. The similar spin is interesting: the 26th was portrayed as a rejection of the Republican house leadership, and the 9th is being portrayed as a rejection of Obama's policies. But the spin, regardless of not being very useful, is dominating the reporting.
Mostly correct. The wild card being independents/the few remaining moderate Republicans, who might feel estranged from the GOP given its hard right turn. Thus, my wife plans to vote for Obama after voting for McCain the last time around. But yes I can't argue with the overall thesis. Obama once had a fighting chance with working-class whites but they have forsaken him completely now. Hispanic support has dwindled. I'm not even sure that African-Americans will vote for him in such huge numbers. Probably not, the turnout will be lower. He needs the Reeps to shoot themselves (a genuine possibility) or something approaching an economic miracle (less so).