Hindsight is 20/20

Tom Reynolds just left Buffalo. He had a plane to catch. During his victory speech he said that tonight he would celebrate his personal victory with his supporters, but that tomorrow he would deal with results for Congress as a whole.

Jack Davis thanked just about everybody in his concession speech. He thanked the Working Families Party and their workers. He thanked Len Lenihan, the Erie County Democratic Chair. He said that Len enrolled him as a Democrat and encouraged him to run.

Not to speak for Len Lenihan, but when he and his party endorsed Jack Davis, it was for a losing cause. No one last spring would have ever expected a real race for the 26th District of New York. So, it made sense to endorse a candidate who could spend more than $2,000,000 of his own money. Hey, spending that kind of money would at least make Tom Reynolds take notice.

Then came the Foley affair. Tom Reynolds knew about those emails last spring, but Len Lenihan did not. What if there had been a real Democrat running, one who actually got out and met the voters? Sure such a candidate would still have had to face The October Surprise, our devastating snow storm, and Tom Reynolds' power in Washington. Reynolds immediately brought $5,000,000 to Western New York, and eventually persuaded Karl Rove that the President had to declare a disaster which will bring many more millions.

Back to hindsight. Right now Tom Reynolds has about an 8,000 vote plurality. "My district has seven counties," Reynolds said tonight. What he did not say is that there are 44,000 more Republicans than Democrats in his district, the one he constructed. If there had been a real Democrat (yes, no one seems to know what that is these days) this is a district that could have been won. Tom Reynolds is a key member of the clique that gave us Iraq and tax cuts for the very rich at the expense of the poor and the middle class. The good people of those seven counties are sending him back to Washington because of an October Surprise and because no one could predict that he would be part of a scandal.