Weirdly Delusional

"This election is a shockwave of voter discontent that will be felt all across the country. Every Republican in Congress should consider himself put on notice. Tonight, we have seen rock-solid Republicans say that they have had enough of a Congress that is in the grips of the special interests, roiled by ethics investigations and doing nothing to help solve the pressing challenges facing the middle class."

--Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emmanuel


"The issues, political and ethics environment are good for Democrats, and Paul Hackett's campaign in a Republican district proves it. Republicans are on notice -- Americans are demanding a change. Americans will no longer tolerate the Republicans' continued abuses of power and catering to corporate special interests at the expense of the public interest."

--House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

"The post-mortems will come in the coming days, but for now, I'm happy with what everyone accomplished in Ohio. It's a new day for the Democratic Party, one in which no Republican district is safe."

--Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos

Clearly these quotes are referring to a recent election. The question I have is is how many of you think the candidate being spoken of won the election that is being discussed? Take a moment before you read further......got your answer in your mind? Okay...the election results in question are the ones in Ohio's Second Congressional District between Republican Jean Schmidt and Democrat Paul Hackett. Guess what? The Democratic congressional nominee, Paul Hackett, lost. But judging by the quotes above, you'd think that he won resoundingly. Now, I'm all for trying to find the positives in defeat, but these quotes seem to project a strange kind of psychosis, one not only of denial, but of outright delusion. How any of the aforementioned can spin this election, one of the few congressional elections this year, into a resounding victory, when in fact their candidate went down to defeat, simply compells me to shake my head. Was it a tighter race for this particular congressional district than in the past? Sure, but special elections don't usually draw out a large amount of voter participation. Do GOP candidates in this district usually blow out Democratic candidates? Sure. But a win of 52% to 48%, close though it may be, has to be put in context. Again, this was a special election called because the prior Ohio congressman left his post to take a position in the Bush Administration. Here is the voter breakdown in comparison to past election cycles:

2002-184,100 R-136,523 D-47,618
2004-310,000 R-227,102 D-89,598
2005-111,000 R-57,974 D-54,401

Make note of the totals. The 2005 election had appreciably less voter turnout than in last years election, and less than even the mid-term elections in '02. This is what has the Democrats excited, that their congressional candidate lost by approximately 4%, instead of getting blow out like theirs did in '04?

Weirdly delusional, indeed.