The Take-A-Way from the New York 26th Election results

A large part of the media is spinning this win by the Democratic challenger Kathy Hochul as a referendum on Paul Ryan’s Budget Plan and while that appears to have a great deal to do with it a larger lesson is available for consumption.  That lesson is the message that was sent by those Republicans voters who chose Hochul over Republican state Assemblywoman Jane Corwin and just how strong the Tea Party may really be in the Republican Party.

Lesson one is that Democrats, Independents, a good number of “real” Republicans and even a few Tea Party members no longer feel like they can trust the campaign promises and words of Republicans.  This was brought about when the current office holders promised to bring jobs back but instead spent all of their time concentrating on assaulting women’s reproductive rights and made no clear effort to fulfill any of the promises made.  The call for a smaller government while voting to increase government’s role in all pregnancies, the assault on the middle class’s right to earn a decent wage, the refusal to bring down the budget by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire and by ignoring of the public demand of shared sacrifice by threatening Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security while defending the big oil subsidies.  Recent reports even have these office holders looking to hold up or flat out denial of aid to those who survived the horrible tornados and extreme weather in this country.

Lesson two is that the 43 percent who voted for Corwin either truly do not care about women’s reproductive rights or the need for shared sacrifice in the restoration of this nation or they really do want to believe that Republicans have learned their lesson and will now stop trying to pass ideological laws and start looking for ways to bring back jobs as promised.

Lesson three is that the real number of die-hard Tea Party voters adds up to no more than 9 percent of the vote as depicted by the number of votes received for Tea Party candidate Jack Davis.  Media has portrayed this group as having a strangle hold on the Republican Party but this number should convince many that the grip is not as tight as one may have once believed.

The final lesson should be quite obvious by now.  Voters, whether Democrat, Republican, Independent or Tea Party are mainly middle class Americans first.  They are a large part of the women, the poor, seniors, veterans and the average America who are getting ignored and blamed by those in office right now for the state of this economy.  They are attempting to relay to those in office that this is not true and enough is enough.  But this lesson may still be lost on those to whom this education was directed at according to an article written by Beth Fouhy and Carolyn Thompson for the Associated Press titled Medicare key to shocking Dem win in NY House race. “Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio said Hochul's victory was a sign of a tough time for Republicans to come.  "What is clear is that this election is a wake-up call for anyone who thinks that 2012 will be just like 2010," he said. "It's going to be a tougher environment, Democrats will be more competitive, and we need to play at the top of our game."   To Crossroads and other supporters of these policies it may be just a game but to those being adversely affected it is not a game, its real life.