McConnell wants Democrats to bail out the GOP for their bad decision on the Ryan budget. If Democrats agree to a deal with big Medicare cuts, the political potency of running against the Ryan budget largely dissipates.

With almost no predictive power and no effect on the balance of control in Congress, this victory will only affect our government if most people assign a shared meaning to it.

No matter how real and humiliating the defeat, it’s always a victory for conservatism.

One corner of real America just made it very clear they don’t want anyone messing with Medicare. And yet Obama’s off negotiating just that.

Democrat Kathy Hochul’s victory in NY-26 last night shows the impact of a tremendous House GOP overreach, one that could easily cost them control of the chamber next year.

The special election in NY-26, which has been dominated by headlines about the Paul Ryan budget to end Medicare, will end at 9pm ET tonight. Jane Corwin isn’t waiting to take precautions: she’s already got herself a court order barring certification of a winner.

A second poll confirms that Kathy Hochul is likely to win the special election tomorrow in NY-26, an upset pickup in a red district in upstate New York. Like the Siena poll, Public Policy Polling finds that Hochul has increased her lead over Jane Corwin even as third-party candidate Jack Davis drops off.

With all three candidates financially viable, how will the race shake out? The presence of Davis makes it harder to claim that this is a referendum on Medicare privatization. However, I do think you can say what Josh Kraushaar says, that this has refocused attention on the actual desires of Republicans, which are broadly unpopular.

This race is a test case, if a somewhat imperfect one because of the third party effort, on the potency of the argument against dismantling social safety net programs. Clearly, voters are on Hochul’s side on that issue, and she has been working to frame the race entirely around that. We shall see if that will carry the day. The election is May 24.

This is priceless: then-Congressman Chris Lee (R-NY26-Shirtless) penned an advice piece for teens that appeared in a local paper midway through his first year in office. Good times.