Dems Win NY-26 Seat on Medicare Worries

Raymond Hernandez describes the win by Democrat Kathy Hochul in the special Congressional election in New york's 26th district as a rebuke of Paul Ryan's GOP Medicare overhaul proposal in The New York Times.

Democrats scored an upset in one of New York’s most conservative Congressional districts on Tuesday, dealing a blow to the national Republican Party in a race that largely turned on the party’s plan to overhaul Medicare.

The results set off elation among Democrats and soul-searching among Republicans, who questioned whether they should rethink their party’s commitment to the Medicare plan, which appears to have become a liability heading into the 2012 elections.

Nate Silver notes that the Ryan budget plan may be a "tipping point" against the GOP.

Once some Republicans start to defect, though, the public may come to view the bill in a different way. Instead of seeing it as a division between Republicans and Democrats — neither of whom are trusted much on budget issues — voters may instead start to see it as a division between moderate Republicans and extremely conservative ones. Voters who are not steeped in the bill’s particulars may well take that as a signal that it is too extreme, and that the “reasonable” majoritarian position is to oppose the plan.

--Ballard Burgher