Gibbs: You're So Stupid I Can Tell You Anything
Update: Gibbs Apparently Reading Kos for His Spin

These elections had nothing to do with the president. Except the one maybe where we won.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs today said that Republican gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey do not portend anything for President Obama, but the dynamics and the Democratic candidate's success in the special election in Upstate New York has ramifications for the GOP.

"I think the data from the gubernatorial races demonstrates that voters went to the polls in those two contests to talk about and work though very local issues that didn't involve the president," Gibbs said, invoking exit polls indicating that most voters in those two states said that President Obama was not a factor in their votes.

In the New York race, Gibbs said, "we watched a party pick a candidate and then purge that candidate. And I think the result was an election (in which) that district sent its first non-Republican to Congress since before the Civil War."

In related news:

President Obama, looking very indifferent about
Creigh Deeds' candidacy, distancing himself and keeping
completely out of this meaningless affair
which concerns, after all, nothing but intensely local issues,
and not at all yoking Deeds' political fortunes to his own

As a formal matter Jake Tapper is simply wrong; in Virginia, for example, 39% of voters said Obama was a factor in their vote. About half of that 39% voted to support him and about half voted to oppose him. This may be a wash, but it is incorrect to say Obama was not "a factor."

The only lesson Gibbs wants to draw from a big Republican victory is that Republicans are in disarray. In such a bad state that we nearly won an election even though the Republican candidate suspended her campaign and endorsed the Democrat.

Here's another lesson: Democrats were handed a victory on a sliver platter due to shenanigans in the Republican nominating process and party strife and our actual official candidate endorsing her Democratic opponent, and even with all these normally-disastrous circumstances, we very nearly won.

There is no doubt that the GOP in NY23 was in disarray. And yet: We very nearly won anyway.

Now, what does Gibbs think will happen in races in which there is a primary, one candidate prevails, and the party goes forward united without splitting the vote between a candidate and spoiler?

Or is he counting on Dede Scozzofava to play spoiler in every election in 2010?

And here's yet another lesson, noted well by the Blue Dogs and the twenty Democratic Senators in red states:

n 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.

Indeed, a Blue Dog representative even said as much, pretty much offering up last night's election results as significantly influencing whether the Blue Dogs will bow to liberal pressures, or if they'll start exerting some serious pressure back on the liberals.

Here's yet another lesson, and one that should give the Democrats shivering douchechills: Rasumussen, the oft-derided "Republican Robopoll" currently putting Obama's job approval at 46%, pretty much nailed New Jersey's final results:

obopolls. Rasmussen's final poll, showing a 46-43-8 Christie win, was pretty damn accurate. Polls using conventional human operators tended to show Corzine ahead. They were wrong.** ... If you have a choice between Rasmussen and, say, the presitigous N.Y.Times, go with Rasmussen! ... Why this is important: Rasmussen's polls tend to show the highest level of opposition to health care reform. If they accurately predict who will turn out to vote, they may signify big potential trouble for Democrats in lower-turnout mid-term elections. The Democratic Congressional id--at least the part that represents primordial existential fear of non-reelection--is throbbing.

Need Spin? Go to the Moderate, Centrist Kos! The cobloggers tell me that Gibbs' factoid about Democrats not losing that seat "since the civil war" is in fact wrong, and comes from Kos' post last night.

Unless the "civil war" you're talking about was the 1992 election. A Democrat won that seat in 1993.

posted by Ace at 11:49 AM

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