JAMES TARANTO: Sink Sank Sunk: The ObamaCare undertow arrives on Florida’s West Coast.
Young wasn’t, Sink did, and Jolly is.
To paraphrase James Carville, it’s the eponymy, stupid. The references are to Rep. Bill Young, who died at 82 in October, and the candidates in yesterday’s special election to succeed him, Democrat Alex Sink and Republican David Jolly.
Young was a Republican, but many political observers gave Sink the edge in the St. Petersburg-area district where Barack Obama narrowly outpolled Mitt Romney. On paper, she was a stronger candidate, having been elected statewide (as chief financial officer, in 2006). Jolly is, as David Freddoso puts it, a lobbyist “with personal issues–a divorce, a girlfriend people referred to as his ‘child bride,’ and an auto accident from decades ago in which he’d killed someone.” There was also a Libertarian in the race, who pulled nearly 5% of the vote. Nonetheless, Jolly won the seat with a 48.5% plurality.
Professional political observers and journalists touted the election as a bellwether. “It’s rare in politics that anything other than a presidential contest is viewed as a ‘must win’–but the special election in Florida’s 13th District falls into that category for Democrats,” wrote Stuart Rothenberg back in January. . . .
As for the House, Freddoso reproduces the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Red to Blue” target map, which shows in yellow and orange some 30 Republican seats the Democrats hope to pick up.
“How many of these look like better opportunities than Florida-13 was just now?” he asks. “I’m guessing maybe 5 of them, and even that might be generous.” He names only two: California’s 31st district, an open seat “which Republicans only kept in 2012 because of a fluke in California’s goofy new primary system” (i.e., both candidates on the general-election ballot were Republicans), and New York’s 11th, whose incumbent, Michael Grimm, in January threatened to “break” a reporter “in half.”
Freddoso’s bottom line: “Democrats are probably going to lose seats in the House this year.” In unwitting support of that view, Salon’s Brian Buetler attempts to explain away the Democrats’ defeat and ends up mired in mush.
A common fate at Salon.