Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Uneasy Victors   [Byron York]

Yes, Niki Tsongas, widow of Paul, won a House seat in a special election yesterday.  But some observers on the left are a bit discomfited by the results.  From Josh Marshall:

It hasn't gotten much attention outside of the Boston suburbs and truly hardcore political junkies. But there was a congressional election today. The topline is that the Democrat, Nikki Tsongas, wife of the late Massachusetts senator and presidential candidate Paul Tsongas, won. But the details are much more interesting. As of 10:23 PM, with 88% of precincts reporting, Tsongas has only 51% vs 45% for the Republican Jim Ogonowski.

That is weird. This is Massachusetts, after all, specifically the rim of suburbs to the northwest of Boston, Marty Meehan's (D) old seat, the 5th district. This is strong Democratic territory. At Openleft.com, Chris Bowers says it's a +10 Dem district. (By the way, among many other things, this is one of the best sites to get smart and candid analyses and number-crunches of stuff like this.) One of many eye-popping numbers about this race was that the Republican, Ogonowski, was crushing Tsongas among voters under 35.

So what happened? Bowers had an interesting post yesterday evening analyzing Tsongas' expected narrow victory. His basic verdict is that Tsongas was a lousy candidate, nominated largely on the basis of her husband's reputation, and picked by an "ossifying" local political machine that hadn't faced a real race in decades. But Chris isn't putting that forward just as an excuse; he notes that the same probably applies to the machines that run numerous solidly Dem districts around the country.

There's so much bad data out there for the Republicans today that I'm inclined to think that this is the issue — a really good Republican candidate, a really bad Democratic candidate. But only fools spin excuses and rationales for data that doesn't square with their assumptions. So I'm not sure I'm ready to let go of this one yet.

From Markos Moulitsas:

Yeay us, except that this is a district that Kerry won 57-41 in 2004 meaning Tsongas underperformed her party (a 10-point swing toward the GOP). Bad candidate? Well, no one could be inspired by a machine-backed retread from the previous century running a low-energy campaign. Good candidate on their part? Perhaps, this Ogonowski character they ran seemed to run a smart race. The political environment? It's not as if Democrats are too excited with the performance of their leadership in Congress. The vagaries of a low-turnout special election? Perhaps — it's how Democrats have been able to snag Republican-leaning seats the past few cycles, including two (in Kentucky and South Dakota) the year before they were blown out in 2004.

So read into this race as little or as much as you want. It probably doesn't mean much.

10/17 06:44 AMShare