Ridiculous NY-09 spin: “It’s a very difficult district for Democrats”

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - Republicans won two House seats in a special election last night.  One, in Nevada, had been a relatively safe district, and Republican Mark Amodei cruised to victory over Democrat Kate Marshall as expected.  Also as predicted, Republican Bob Turner won a six-point victory over Democrat David Weprin in NY-09, a Congressional district in the heart of Democratic stronghold New York City.  The margin of victory exactly matched polling leads for Turner from both Siena and Democratic pollster PPP in the final days before the vote.


That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a surprise.  The NY-09 seat has been in Democratic hands since, well, Warren Harding was President.  So what did the leader of the Democratic Party have to say about the loss?

Democratic party leaders insisted the loss wasn’t a harbinger of things to come. “It’s a very difficult district for Democrats,” said Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, noting its Democratic margins there tend to be the second lowest of all the districts in New York City.

Well, in her defense, she still hasn’t gotten past that tough loss when Andrew Peterson edged David O’Connell for the seat … in 1922. The same seat was held by Geraldine Ferraro, Chuck Schumer, and Anthony Weiner … when he had his pants on. Going back to 1996, the lowest percentage a Democrat got in a general election in this seat was 60.8%, which was in 2010 while the Tea Party took 63 seats from Democrats that ended up being a lot more “difficult” than this one. It was such a difficult district that Weiner ran unopposed in 2006 and virtually unopposed in 2008.