{"id":1329,"date":"2009-11-19T14:13:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-19T18:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/11\/19\/did-team-hoffman-panic-on-election-night\/"},"modified":"2009-11-19T14:13:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-19T18:13:00","slug":"did-team-hoffman-panic-on-election-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/11\/19\/did-team-hoffman-panic-on-election-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Team Hoffman "panic" on election night?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Independent<\/a> is asking why Doug Hoffman conceded so quickly on election night, with thousands of uncounted ballots and plenty of questions still unanswered.<\/p>\n

\n

Why did Hoffman concede in the first place? That I\u2019d credit to the campaign\u2019s overconfidence. They went into election day planning for a clear victory…<\/p>\n

When votes started coming in far, far below their expectations, they lost hope very quickly.<\/p>\n

Hoffman himself was so devastated during his election night speech that he temporarily forgot to mention that he was conceding the election \u2014 Mike Long ran onstage with a note reminding him to \u2014 and he left the election party making no more statements to the press.<\/p>\n

Simply put, I think Hoffman panicked on election night and is now honestly, frantically trying to undo a mistake. I don\u2019t know if he or his team realize the long-term political damage of this.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This read of election night squares with my experience. <\/p>\n

When I arrived at Hoffman HQ, the mood wasn’t just buoyant, it was certain.<\/p>\n

Rob Ryan, Doug Hoffman’s spokesman, boasted to reporters that he was wearing his RINO tie, a kind of victory trophy for having shoved Dede Scozzafava aside. <\/p>\n

(Hoffman’s failure to reach out to Scozzafava after she withdrew may have cost him the election.)<\/p>\n

When the vote started coming in, with Bill Owens actually leading, people at the Hotel Saranac were shocked and devastated. <\/p>\n

One Hoffman supporter pointed out to me quietly that Hoffman had lost his home town of Saranac Lake, where he grew up and stationed his campaign office.<\/p>\n

Put simply, the Conservatives were expecting a coronation. As I’ve written before, I expected the same thing.<\/p>\n

But voters get the final say. And unless Mr. Hoffman can provide evidence to the contrary, the voters have spoken plainly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Independent is asking why Doug Hoffman conceded so quickly on election night, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[874],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}