Election Night Fall-Out

So, it's all over.  As it turns out, the GOP had a very good night, winning almost everything it went for.  The one notable exception was Doug Hoffman's NY-23 race, though he wasn't running as a Republican.  Here are some post-election thoughts that help put things in perspective.

The single best roundup of the evening that I've seen is at Hot Air:

Republicans had their best night in five years yesterday, winning two governorships in states that went big for Barack Obama last year.  They came closer than some would have guessed in holding a California district while running a no-name against the state's Lieutenant Governor.  And while the local GOP botched a district in New York just as bad as they possibly could, the news from NY-23 is actually not bad at all.

Let's start with the special election in New York.  Many of us hoped that Douglas Hoffman could pull off a remarkable outsider bid yesterday to beat Bill Owens, and he came within a couple of points of making it.  That puts a Democrat in the seat for the first time since 1993 (not 117 years as has been previously reported).   It's never a best-case for the GOP when a Democrat wins, but by keeping Dede Scozzafava out of the seat, the GOP has the chance to win this seat back in a year with a better candidate — perhaps Hoffman, perhaps another Republican who shares core principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism.  Dislodging an incumbent Republican would have been considerably more difficult, and a unified GOP should win this district — especially given the signals sent everywhere else to Democrats.

What signals?  The GOP trounced Democrats in two states that Barack Obama won big just one year ago.  Obama beat McCain in Virginia by 13 points; Bob McDonnell won it by 17.  Republicans swept the statewide offices, reversing Democratic gains made over the last few election cycles, and are set to take at least a half-dozen Democratic seats in the legislature.  It should be remembered that the current governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine, is also the Democratic Party chair, put there in part to consolidate Democratic gains in his state.

In New Jersey, the news is even worse.  Chris Christie beat Jon Corzine by four points in a state that went for Obama by 15 points — and where a Republican hadn't won in over ten years.  Unlike Virginia, Obama campaigned heavily for Corzine, calling him his "partner" and putting his prestige on the line.  Joe Biden made a couple of campaign appearances, too, and the White House supervised the campaign in the final weeks after Corzine initially fell behind.  Obama made the argument for Corzine all about Obama — and New Jersey, one of the bluest states in the nation, rejected him.

Obama will still be president for another three years, but the mystique is gone.  New Jersey just taught Democrats in Congress a big lesson — Obama can't get them re-elected.  Being the President's "partner" on his radical agenda is not a winning position; it wasn't for Corzine in what should have been a secure blue state, and it certainly won't be in moderate or conservative districts and states held by Democrats in the House and Senate.

That is a huge blow to Obama and his agenda, as Democrats now have to consider unpopular bills for ObamaCare and cap-and-trade in an entirely new light.  If they fall in behind Obama instead of listening to their constituents, they will find themselves in retirement after the 2010 midterms.   That's the big lesson, and it will not be lost on moderate Democrats.

They also link to Instapundit, who offers this good analysis:

The Obama invincibility that was so much in evidence then seems to have lost its power. People can argue the reasons why these elections, all in places Obama carried handily, were so close. But if he were the political marvel he was thought to be, these races wouldn't have been contests, but walkovers. So one consequence of this Election Day is the end of his special political magic.

That's no surprise — as that magic was a largely substanceless froth whipped up by campaign consultants and compliant big-media cheerleaders.

The truth is, Obama wasn't ready to be president when he ran in 2008. When he started, he probably thought he had no real chance — he himself admitted upon entering the Senate that he wasn't qualified to be president — and that his first run would simply be a PR effort that would lift him to the top ranks of Senate Democrats. …

But he was right the first time about not being ready for the Oval Office. As president, he seems confused and a bit distant on the issues, leaving the details to congressional Democrats and an ever-growing number of "czars" while he golfs and launches attacks at Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

With the economy tanking (unemployment is much worse after Obama's deficit-swelling stimulus than Obama's advisers predicted it would be with no stimulus at all), with the promised post-partisanship dissolving into witch-hunts against hostile media and the promised post-racial America devolving into the awkwardly staged "beer summit," with the "necessary war" in Afghanistan the subject of endless dithering and the promised "smart diplomacy" materializing as a series of awkward missteps by Hillary Clinton, the froth has become a lot less frothy.

As this indicates, the one real loss by the Right was NY-23.  Michelle Malkin offers a few blunt thoughts on it:

Better a donkey in office that acts like a donkey than a donkey in elephant's clothing making a complete ass of the GOP.

NY-23 is a victory for conservatives who refuse to be marginalized in the public square by either the unhinged left or the establishment right. A humble accountant from upstate New York exposed the hypocrisy of GOP leaders trying to solicit funds from conservatives by lambasting Pelosi and the Dems' support for high taxes, Big Labor, and bigger government — while using conservatives' money to subsidize a high-taxing, Big Labor-pandering, bigger government radical. The repercussions will be felt well beyond NY-23's borders. Conservatives' disgust with the status quo has been heard and felt. They have been silent too long. They will be silent no more.

Some advice from a Republican strategist that I think is dead on:

One of the lessons he draws is that Republican candidates have to "finish the sentence." Instead of just saying that we have to keep taxes and spending low, and thus pleasing conservatives, he said, McDonnell explain how these policies would create jobs and "plug the hole in Richmond." Too many Republican candidates, he says, forget to do that.

You can't just say 'no', you have to say 'no and here's why, and here's a better way'.  That's a great point, and something GOP candidates definitely need to keep in mind.

Regarding the idea that the media will almost certainly be spinning all day long, that only NY-23 really counted:

Isn't it a little strange to argue that the NY-23 result should take the wind of N.J. and Va. out of Republican sails? It seems to me that that result makes exactly the same point as the two governor's races: A Republican running as a conservative alternative to the party in power at the moment, reasonably attuned to the tone and mood of his constituents, and reasonably unafraid to embrace his party and its conservative identity, can win. It seems pretty obvious that if the GOP had run such a candidate in NY-23 (for instance, if they had run Doug Hoffman rather than forcing him to run as an independent), that candidate would have won handily.

Jonah Goldberg offers some good analysis, as well:

It's already the conventional wisdom: This was all about anti-incumbency not anti-Obama. David Gregory just spent 10 minutes rambling about this point. Ramesh's Republican strategist concurs, saying this wasn't anti-Obama. For the most part I have no problem with this interpretation. There is a profound anti-incumbency spirit out there.

My favorite sign at the DC Tea Party protest was carried by an enormous middle-aged dude in a Grizzly Adams beard: "Impeach Everyone."

But if I might clarify something for the folks at the "Today" show and elsewhere: Congress is not divided into the Republicans, the Democrats and the much reviled "Incumbents." The Democratic Party is the incumbent party. By no means are all the country's problems the Democrats' fault. But the way the Democrats are dealing with those problems are the Democrats' fault.

There's a "wrong direction" mood growing and the Democrats are at the helm — with a Democratic supermajority in the Senate, a Democratic majority in the House and an incumbent-in-chief who wildly over-promised what he could do in the White House.

Yesterday was a severe blow to healthcare reform and cap and trade. But yes, Barack Obama is still popular. But if all Barack Obama's personal popularity is good for is getting gushing profiles of his wife in supermarket magazines, "buck up camper" essays in Newsweek and the Nobel Prize for bring hope to Norway and Sweden, that's okay with me.

Meanwhile, I will say it again: The Democratic Party is the incumbent party. And if yesterday's voting was a referendum on incumbents and what the incumbents are doing, then yesterday was a very, very bad day for the Democrats.

NRO sums it up this way:

The Comeback Begins

If there's a lesson from the race besides the obvious — don't let out-of-touch GOP officials pick liberal congressional candidates — it is that conservatives need to run campaigns based not only on their philosophical soundness but on the improved conditions that this soundness can be expected to generate. That was the template for McDonnell's huge victory. If his governance delivers on his promises, explicit and implicit, he will be a model for Republicans nationwide.

Democrats are taking solace in the banal truth that these elections were not solely referenda on President Obama. The Democratic candidate in Virginia ran a pathetic campaign, and the Democratic governor of New Jersey was a failure. The elections nonetheless offered proof (not that any should have been needed) that Obama cannot transfer his popularity to his allies. They showed that the powerful negative reaction to President Bush may have run its course. And they suggested that important aspects of Obama's agenda are encountering formidable resistance, not only from the core supporters of the Republican party but also from independent voters.

And, finally, a largely overlooked but hugely significant vote took place in Maine yesterday:

Voters on Tuesday repealed the state's same sex marriage law after an emotionally charged campaign that drew large numbers to the polls and focused national attention on Maine.

Read the whole thing for the details, but the plain fact is that this makes Maine the 31st state to vote down gay marriage.  That would be a 100% NO answer on the question, all across the country.  Oh, sure, there have been a few state legislatures or federal judges that have instituted it on their own, but every time it has come up for a vote by the people, they've said NO.  And, even more significant is the fact that Maine is a very, very blue state.  Not a whole lot of conservative evangelicals running around up there.

There's my two cents.