Hoffman pulls an Al Gore.

Unconcedes.

After all that, why didn't Doug Hoffman win?

That's the first question of the morning. I think it must be resolved before we can move on to the big question: What do the Election 2009 results mean for Obama (and the congressional Democrats)?

Here's something mrs whatsit wrote in the comments to last night's election post. (I found the photos to illustrate her painful observations about the appearance of the 2 men, and I corrected her misspelling of "Scozzafava.")

A few points about the Congressional race from someone who lives in upstate NY (not in district 23, but nearby.)

1) We have been inundated with TV commercials here. On TV, Hoffman comes across as exceedingly weird, skinny and overeager with googly eyes, bright yellow teeth, and an odd, halting way of speaking.



He kept repeating a slogan that he was a common-sense Reagan conservative and common sense isn't so common any more. It got annoying.

Owens, by contrast, is big and rugged-looking. He's an Air Force veteran and he has that military solidity, calm and self-possession.



He seems like a country guy, and this is a rural district. He presented himself as a centrist. On the human level, Owens is the kind of person voters around here feel comfortable with. Hoffman's not. Neither was Scozzafava.

2) On the numbers -- as of this morning, with 93 percent of the vote counted, the math-challenged local newspaper is reporting that the split is 46 percent Hoffman, 49 percent Owens, and 6 percent Scozzafava, who was still on the ballot, not having quit until Saturday. (Adds up to 101 percent, but who's counting?) In any event, Scozzafava's vote is bigger than the split, which seems to put most attempts to diagnose the Owens/Hoffman outcome into guesswork territory.

Owens came across as to the right of Ms. Scozzafava, whose ads emphasized her support for such lefty favorites as card check. Hoffman, by contrast, seemed to belong pretty far over on the right. Upstate NY has traditionally been rock-ribbed Republican but has been trending Democratic recently, with the result that Blue Dog Democrats and other center-tending politicos have been doing well. I don't think the Owens win has as much to do with the candidates' political parties, though, as it does with who they are personally and with their ad presentations.

"This despicable attack on Assemblywoman Scozzafava offends me personally and exemplifies exactly what's wrong with Hoffman and his right wing backers."

Democrat Bill Owens chivalrously defends the erstwhile Republican. The despicable attacker is Rush Limbaugh, who said:

Scozzafava has screwed every RINO in the coun -- we can say that she's guilty of widespread bestiality. She has screwed every RINO in the country. Everyone can see just see how phony and dangerous they are. You know, 2010 might be a nightmare for PETA. Two animals may become extinct; RINOs and Blue Dog Democrats. Pelosi's gonna kill off the Blue Dogs, and the conservatives are gonna finally get rid of RINOs. The American people have had enough.

Audio at the link. I'd embed, but the photo used there (Media Matters) is of the old (fat) Rush, and I don't want to display that here.

So are you shocked at Rush's crude humor, or do you think that's a level of sexual humor that you hear all the time coming from, say, Chris Rock or Bill Maher, and aimed at conservatives? It's a twist that you've got a woman in the masculine role, but that's good feminism. Meanwhile, Owens's defense is retrograde. Not only did Scozzafava withdraw from a tough fight, she sought refuge in the arms of her former opponent, who now absorbs her and enfolds her in protection. That's not progress for feminism. Why doesn't Scozzafava stand up for herself and — as they say — punch back twice as hard?

But, feminism aside, what is Owens really saying "exemplifies exactly what's wrong with Hoffman and his right wing backers"? Is it that they make sex-themed wisecracks? I think he's referring to the fact that real conservatives are actually conservative. They don't like RINOs and they want to discredit them, and they are exulting over Scozzafava's endorsement of the Democrat because it demonstrates clearly that RINOs are not really Republicans. Conservatives want the GOP to be conservative. That's "exactly what is wrong" from the point of view of a Democrat like Owens, because he would have preferred to compete with a liberal Republican. Presumably, he knows it's easier for a Democrat to argue that he is the better liberal than to pit liberal values against conservative values. That is what he admitted, isn't it?

UPDATE: Rush, on his show today:

[W]hat's happened now is that Owens has come out and issued a statement defending Dede Scozzafava against this outrageous personal attack launched by me.  Now, Dede Scozzafava is a liberal woman.  I thought she could take care of herself.  Why do these wimp liberal guys have to come out and start defending these women?  What happened to feminism in this country?  I mean, why did she quit in the first place?  That's not what feminism taught women to do.

Scozzafava endorses the Democrat!

Well, then!

IN THE COMMENTS: Jason says:

[T]his is just plain dishonorable. All the people who endorsed her look bad, so does her party.

Freeman Hunt say:

And I'm with Jason, it's dishonorable. Lots of GOP establishment people went to bat for her, and now they look extremely foolish for having done so.

"The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York" — Frank Rich makes it all sound so scary.

Or at least the NYT headline makes it sound as though Frank Rich is about to scare us over the Stalinist invasion. But, reading the text, I see: "The right’s embrace of Hoffman is a double-barreled suicide for the G.O.P." Are they killing the poor citizens of upstate New York or are they killing themselves? Get the image straight, Frank. Are liberals supposed to be aghast that conservatives were able to promote a conservative ahead of the Republican Party's liberal candidate? Or should liberals be delighted that the Republican Party is destroying itself from the inside?

The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The movement’s undisputed leaders, Palin and Beck... would gladly see the Republican Party die on the cross of right-wing ideological purity....

Now, Rich himself sounds pretty wacky and paranoid to me. He tells us that it's "better for Democrats if Hoffman wins." He wants Hoffman to win. Really.

Punch-drunk with this triumph, the right will redouble its support of primary challengers to 2010 G.O.P. candidates they regard as impure....

The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats’ prospects next year. But the electoral math is less interesting than the pathology of this movement. Its antecedent can be found in the early 1960s, when radical-right hysteria carried some of the same traits we’re seeing now: seething rage, fear of minorities, maniacal contempt for government, and a Freudian tendency to mimic the excesses of political foes....

Punch-drunk... pathology... hysteria... seething... fear... maniacal... Rich's perception of craziness seems... crazy. Hoffman and others are saying that conservatives should stand for traditional conservative values, and not, like Scozzafava, be more like the liberals. Give the electorate a choice between conservative and liberal and see who wins. That strikes me as quite sane. And I am speaking as someone who voted for Barack Obama in part because John McCain was not a solid, coherent conservative. Faced with the need to trust either a (seemingly) thoughtful, intelligent liberal and a confusing partly liberal candidate, I chose the former. I would do the same thing today. But I would like a real choice. Let the G.O.P. be conservative and defend and develop conservatism and see if people want it. I'm not surprised Rich is trying to portray that strategy as insane: He's a hardcore liberal.

These conservatives’ whiny cries of victimization also parrot a tic they once condemned in liberals....

Oh, I've already said what I had to say. I just threw in one more line because "parrot a tic" amuses me.

Don't tick off a parrot. And as for what to do with a tick... we don't parrot it. We do this.

Now, I'm getting far afield, and I'm manufacturing what could be perceived as evidence that we wingers are crazy. So let me, at long last, bring this post in for a landing. With something positive. Because, you know, we right-wing ideologues are an optimistic bunch. I want to compliment Rich — and the NYT — for studding the column with hyperlinks, many of which send us away from the NYT website. For example, when Rich attributes "whiny cries of victimization" to Rush Limbaugh, there is a link to Limbaugh's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Maybe some NYT readers who would never listen to the radio show will pop over there to see how terrible Rush is and find to their amazement that it's completely cogent and impressive. It might even strike a sympathetic chord for some readers. ("My racial views? You mean, my belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to his race?")

Scozzafava: "I hereby release those individuals who have endorsed and supported my campaign to transfer their support as they see fit to do so."

"I am and have always been a proud Republican."