Alex Massie Alex Massie

Lessons from NY-23 and Virginia?

My old chum Toby Harnden says yesterday’s election results produced a “miserable night” for Barack Obama and clearly losing the gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia was hardly good news for the White House. But if the GOP has grounds for crowing there, then the result from NY-23, where Doug Hoffman’s conservative candidacy was rejected in a constituency in which the Democratic candidate usually fails to win more than 35% of the vote, was an indication of the limits of Palinism.

True, as Toby says, the local complicating factors in upstate NY were such as to make drawing too many conclusions from it a pretty hazardous business. But the fact remains that the district’s new Congressman is a Democrat and that he’s representing a constituency so conservative that the Democratic party doesn’t even always bother to contest it.

To the extent, then, that Sarah Palin is the ruin, not the future of the Republican party this was a warning shot that, theoretically at least, could help the GOP save itself from its own worst instincts. Well, that’s the theory.

More generally, it was a bloody night for incumbents. Even Mike Bloomberg, despite his millions and no-name challenger, only won by five points in New York City. We’re so used to tough economic times by now that we sometimes forget, or under-estimate, the extent to which the economy makes it better to be the challenger than the incumbent.

As Megan McArdle says, yesterday’s results give everyone something to spin with. How much does 2009 or even 2010 matter for 2012? Not hugely, perhaps. The GOP should pick up 20 seats next year and do pretty well in the state houses too, but that doesn’t mean it’s ready for a real revival at a national level.

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