Thats not as bad as Diane Gordon getting re-elected in AD-40 even though she's awaiting trial for being caught on videotape soliciting a bribe of free house from a contractor in return for favors from her office. Basically once you get elected in new york state in some places, you'll get re-elected unless you are up on murder and rape charges. And even then the vote might be close. What it says is that if people don't care about a race on the ballot instead of just skipping voting, they'll vote for whoever has incumbent next to their name. Its a good bet that many of the voters who voted for Kuhl and Gordon had no idea of their criminal records. Not everyone watches the news.

Of all the insurgent congressional races the Dems lost this year, this one bummed me out the most, not only because Kuhl is such a tool (hey, I'm a poet!), but because Massa was such an obviously superior candidate. Not only does he have a great c.v., but having met him and seen him speak, it would be obvious to anyone with an open mind what a great Congresscritter he'd make (full disclosure - I donated several times to his campaign). Even if Kuhl were considerably better than the joke he is, Massa would still have been the better choice. Also, Kuhl's incumbency shouldn't have been such an overwhelming advantage - he was a freshman elected by a relatively narrow margin, given the district's registration profile.

So, what was the problem here? I freely admit that I'm blowing hot air, because I haven't seen a detailed post-mortem on this race, but I'm willing to bet that some small fraction of that $3 million Rahm Emanuel saw fit to dump into the Duckworth campaign wouldn't have hurt.

And in a way, I do think it's worse than Gordon, because although her level of corruption is jaw-dropping, she's holding a down-ticket office, not in a position where she's attracting national notice (thank God!). A good number of shamelessly corrupt Republicans were beaten in other parts of the country; why should New York State be any different?