NY-9 -- How could the Democrats have Lost?

In a stunning victory, Republican Bob Turner won the special election in New York District 9 and will go to Washington to replace Anthony Weiner in the House of Representatives. It was the first victory by a Republican in the district in 88 years. It wasn't even close; Turner won with 54% of the vote.

So how could this happen? There were certainly some special features in this district that helped.

1) The district has a large orthodox Jewish population that was outraged at Weprin, the Democrat, for voting in favor of gay marriage in the state legislature and that was angry at president Obama for his policy towards Israel. Not many other districts around the country are like this one in this regard.

2) For a New York City district, the ninth has a tiny African American population. The Democrats here are mostly white with about a third being either Hispanic or Asian. That means that president Obama's strongest supporters were not part of the mix of the district's voters.

3) Weprin was a terrible candidate. He flubbed a question as to the size of the national debt in a way that made it clear that he had no idea about that subject. He also ducked out of a debate and blamed Hurricane Irene which had been through the area two days earlier.

4) Turner got endorsements from prominent local Democrats including former mayor Ed Koch and state legislator Dov Hikind.

Even with all this being said, this was still a stunning defeat for the Democrats and team Obama.

1) The majority of Democrats in Congress come from districts that have a majority of white voters. If the white vote in Democrat districts in 2012 splits anything like it did yesterday in NY-9, there will be wholesale losses for the party.

2) Jews were the group that gave Obama his strongest support after African Americans in 2008. If Obama has lost the majority of that group, he is in deep trouble in states like Florida, Pennsylvania and even New Jersey.

3) The Democrats ran a major scare campaign against a candidate they called "Tea Party Bob Turner" by claiming that Turner wanted to gut both social security and medicare. The campaign was everywhere in New York media, but it fell flat. Obama is planning on running against the GOP on the same basis in 2012, and the failure in NY-9 is ominous for the Obamacrats.

No matter why the reason, however, we should all wish Turner well in Congress.