...I meant in the election, not necessarily in life. That is for others to debate. What can be said now definitively, however, is that in the election held two-plus weeks ago, Democrat Bill Owens was properly elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, while de facto GOP nominee Doug Hoffman has officially run out of chances (scroll down for the vote totals):
It's over. Rep. Bill Owens, D-Plattsburgh, leads by 3,105 votes with 3,072 absentee ballots left to be counted.
With 58.6 percent of all absentees counted, Mr. Hoffman has gained 71 votes on Mr. Owens so far.
It is also worth noting that one of Bill Owens' best counties on Election Day (Saint Lawrence County) has not yet counted its absentees, meaning that Owens lead may well stretch further before all is said and done.
For his part, Hoffman has not backed off of his bizarre and unsubstantiated claim that some shadowy coalition made up of ACORN, organized labor, and the Democratic Party somehow successfully schemed to deny him his victory. It is a truly bizarre claim, but Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent might be spot on with the motivation behind Hoffman's absurd claims:
So what is defeated Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman doing by casting doubt on the results of the NY-23 special election? The most obvious answer, suggested by that letter, is fundraising. It was an expensive race, and Hoffman put some of his own cash on the line.
Indeed, Hoffman did loan his own campaign a fair amount of cash. The best way to recoup some of that lost spare change is to give people a reason to part with their cash well after the election is over. The most effective way to do that is to give the prospective donor the sense that the election, despite all evidence to the contrary, is not really over.
Weigel also comes up with the best explanation to date for Hoffman's quick concession (yes...it is better than Hoffman's "I was forced into it" rationale from Wednesday):
Why did Hoffman concede in the first place? That I’d credit to the campaign’s overconfidence. They went into election day planning for a clear victory. Hoffman bragged to me, and to other reporters, that he hadn’t even talked to Dede Scozzafava, the ousted GOP candidate, because he’d “win without her.” When votes started coming in far, far below their expectations, they lost hope very quickly.
So a political neophyte who had grown convinced that his victory was assured, and that he was the new conservative superstar, learns instead that the voters of the 23rd district do not share the fervor for him found within the teabagger crowd.
Shellshocked, and no doubt more than a little embarrassed, he coughs out a quick and painful statement of concession, wanting to leave the stage as quickly as possible.
When the usual adjustments to the vote count make the race more competitive (but far from actually competitive--there were eleven elections in 2008 for Congress that had closer margins by percentage of the vote than this one), Hoffman loses composure again and makes that strange "un-concession" with Glenn Beck.
Then, when math gets in the way and it becomes clear that there is no need to call in Al Michaels for another "Do You Believe In Miracles?" moment, Hoffman has few places to go. So that is when he turns to the absurdity of the stolen election claim, with a chain of evidence rivalled only by the slashed tires claim on Election Day that wound up being the work of a broken bottle.
For a guy who has said in the past few weeks that he might be interested in seeking public office again in the near future, Hoffman's antics are more likely to shovel dirt on that proposition rather than give it life.