But to this writer the far more meaningful race was the NY-23 race. In the most basic sense, it is more meaningful on the national level because another vote for the Democrats in the House of Representatives clearly carries more national import than the election of Republican governors in two states which have often elected Republican governors in the past, and one of which clearly only went for Obama a year ago because he was Barrack Obama, rather than because he was a Democrat.
It also should not be at all surprising that two crucial segments of Obama's base, namely blacks and young voters, would not feel particularly motivated to come out and vote in an off year election featuring 4 old white men. Again, when candidates who have very little in common with Obama other than party affiliation lose an election, it's hard to see why this should be seen as a referendum on Obama.
But the real reason the NY-23 race is so interesting is what it might portend for the future of the Republican party. It shows how there is nothing inevitable about the grand alliance at the base of the Republican party between big business, fiscal conservatives, neocons, and social conservatives. The forging of this alliance, initiated under Nixon and consolidated under Reagan, was a tactical decision which happened to work out quite well for the Republicans for the past several decades, but there's no obvious reason why this particular alignment of interests would necessarily figure to endure indefinitely, just as there's no obvious reason why a single issue voter (on say, abortion) would necessarily care how oil companies do or where wars are fought overseas. The fact is that values and interests are shifting in many parts of America, and the parties will need to keep adapting.
What NY-23 did was it showed social conservatives just how easy it would be to ditch the Republican party apparatus entirely, and even garner nationwide support from major figures such as Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty, not to mention coming just a few percentage points shy of winning. In the end the national Republican party may have been correct that Scozzafava was more electable in an abstract sense, but it was obviously miscalculated the impact of running a center-right candidate would have on its nationwide "base." In a normal election year with hundreds of candidates running for office across the nation, Scozzafava likely would have attracted scant notice, and the party's strategy likely would have succeeded, but in an off year she was under a scanning electron microscope.
But what NY-23 also showed was that hard-right conservatives can and will get defeated, even in regions that haven't returned a Democrat since 1850. The Republican party is at a crossroads and it needs to evaluate its coalition-building tactics. It is more than imaginable that the Sarah Palins and their followers might split off and support "Conservative Party" candidates in future elections as well, even if it's only on candidates they particularly disapprove of and even if they don't bolt from the Republican Party entirely.
It is also conceivable that the Republican Party could successfully move a slot to center and create a new coalition that excludes the hard-right social conservatives but more than offsets the loss by picking up more of the youth and the suburban middle class, for example. In any case, it seems that the most socially conservative elements of the Republican party are growing increasingly restless under a Democratic administration, and can increasingly no longer be relied upon 100 percent.
