Overinterpreting the election results

There's a lot of Sturm und Drang about what last night's election results mean in terms of Obama and the national political scene. This happens all the time -- when there's an entire industry dedicated to producing political news, people need plenty of opinions to fill airtime. Less than a tenth of what is discussed on the Crossfire-style shows has any impact whatsoever on how people actually vote.

Two principles explain what happened last night:

-When the economy sucks, incumbent parties get whacked.

-The party out of power nearly always wins in off-year elections. These low-turnout elections are dominated by intensity, and the party out of power is always more pissed off than the party in power. In 2001, less than two months after the September 11th attacks, with Bush's approval rating in the upper 80s, Democrats won the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia. Of course, back then the Democrats claimed those elections were a referendum on Bush, and the Republicans said it was no such thing.

NY's 23rd is such a special case that it really shouldn't be extrapolated. Scozzafava was chosen by a committee of Republican insiders, and she was almost certainly chosen because of personal favors and connections. If there had been a primary, Hoffman would have won, and then would have won the general with 60+% of the vote. Instead, the chaos last weekend highlighted just how conservative Hoffman was, and lost him votes from moderate Republicans and independents.

But go ahead, Fox, MSNBC, CNN, dailykos, redstate, mydd, freerepublic, talkingpointsmemo, National Review, The Nation, Weekly Standard, Mother Jones, Air America, littlegreenfootballs, Huffington Post, and facebook: Tell me all about how last night means Americans are rejecting Obama, Sarah Palin, socialism, nutty conservatism, and bipartisanship.