NY-23, less 1, part 2

Dede Scozzafava's Saturday understatement of withdrawal -- "Polls have indicated that my chances of winning this election are not as strong as we would like them to be" -- was the most clarity we've heard from New York's 23rd Congressional District in days.

A Scozzafava-campaign associate had earlier offered the rather vague but universal view: "This is the strangest thing I have ever seen. I don’t know what to make of this thing, to be honest. There are so many angles to this thing. It’s wild."

Political angles, both strange and wild, have dominated this suddenly two-man race, now between Republican-Scozzafava-endorsed Democrat Bill Owens and the Conservative Party's Doug Hoffman. But some things never change. For instance, prominent national Republicans who, out of deep convictions and imperishable principles, of course, had steadfastly backed Scozzafava and roundly condemned Hoffman, lurched on Saturday with unalarming alacrity to their former enemy's camp.

In a piece titled "A profile in courage, it isn't," the Politico quoted Newt Gingrich -- "who'd previously warned that backing Hoffman in the NY-23 House race amounted to a 'purge' of the GOP" -- saying that he now "believe[s] everyone who wants to create jobs with lower taxes and to control spending and deficits should vote for Hoffman Tuesday." Customized neck brace to follow, one assumes.

It'll be a volume purchase, though, since the Republican National Committee's righteously upright chairman, Michael Steele, was engaged in his own whiplashing -- "Effective immediately, the R.N.C. will endorse and support the Conservative candidate in the race ..." blah, blah, blah; and the emotionally scarred folks at the National Republican Congressional Committee recovered just as quickly, too, announcing that they now "look forward to welcoming Doug Hoffman into the House Republican Conference ... for the good of our nation ..." -- blah, blah, and another blah.

Yesterday the NY Times' Frank Rich presented some riveting thoughts on all things 23rd, concluding that "No matter what the results in that race on Tuesday, the Republicans are the sure losers." Expanding his argument to a national plane, Rich further offered that it's "better for Democrats if Hoffman wins....

"The right’s embrace of Hoffman is a double-barreled suicide for the G.O.P," he wrote, since a successful embrace will ensure that "the right will redouble its support of primary challengers to 2010 G.O.P. candidates they regard as impure," and thereby spotlight the movement's "pathology of ... seething rage, fear of minorities, maniacal contempt for government, and a Freudian tendency to mimic the excesses of political foes."

Rich, as always, made an elegantly distinguished argument. But still, one is left to ponder: Is there a living American soul who doesn't already comprehend -- disapprovingly or otherwise -- the right's innermost pathologies? And is there any question -- no matter what happens in NY's 23rd on Tuesday -- that the right "will redouble its support of primary challengers to 2010 G.O.P. candidates they regard as impure"? Plus, just how many of the "impure" remain? One could count them on the fingers of one hand.

In addition, Rich only parenthetically noted for national reference that which ultimately unsettles the most: "In the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll," he observed, "only 17 percent of Americans identify themselves as Republicans (as opposed to 30 percent for the Democrats, and 44 for independents)."

That was meant to be encouraging -- a sort of Don't worry, the numbers are against any national mushrooming of this very local Hoffman phenomenon. But, as others are pointing out, and as I recited Saturday, Hoffman's rise has been infused with voter protest from the middle -- that is, from the largest electoral bloc.

"At the root of Hoffman's strength, according to the [latest Daily] Kos poll," wrote, on Friday, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post's The Fix, "are independents, [those] most coveted by both major parties heading into the November midterms." And that ain't good.

These NY voters simply don't seem to care that pathological lunatics are puffing their man. Instead, what appears to be taking place is less an endorsement of the "right's embrace of Hoffman" than a populistic, "seething rage" of anti-establishmentarianism, borne of what's perceived by mostly low-information voters as unnecessary debt, inexcusable bailouts, and intrusive government "takeovers."

Part of this perception is due to the persistently conservative nature of the average American voter, and part to characteristically lousy Democratic messaging (the latter of which, of course, is a veteran accomplice to the former). But whatever the weighted combination of these and perhaps other factors, the perception is real and it's formidable and it's potentially lethal -- not to the GOP, but to the Democratic Party.

Remember, politicians are much like Hollywood producers and generals -- they imitate success; they make the last movie and fight the last war and conduct the last campaign. And if the Democratic Establishment uses NY-23 as a strategic yardstick in 2010 -- if, that is, they chase center-right independents as the key to electoral success -- the process could translate into a further-diluted Democratic Party and a calamity for Democratic progressives.

Naturally, all of this is just speculation, as was Frank Rich's piece. But his observation about a "double-barreled suicide for the GOP" could, in the years to come, look less than unilateral.

I still hope to be surprised and lastingly converted someday, but I possess that little faith in both the Democratic Party and the American voter's sustained commitment to real reform.