THERE IS FEVER, THERE IS PAIN – AT 8:32 A.M. ET:  News helicopters report convoys of trucks entering New York's 9th Congressional District, stocked with calming medications to be dispensed to local Democrats as part of Obamacare.

As the whole political world knows by now, the GOP staged a stunning upset in Anthony Weiner's old district yesterday, winning a congressional seat there for the first time since 1920. 

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the Obama-appointed Dem national chair, tells us that the New York 9th has always been a problem for Democrats.  Wait.  It's been Democratic for almost a century, and it's a problem?  I've heard spinning, but Ms. Wasserman-Schultz is a jet-powered propeller. 

The convulsion yesterday was clearly a referendum on President Obama, on his economic failures, and on his Mideast policy.  The district is heavy with supporters of Israel.  New York's iconic former Democratic mayor, Ed Koch, supported the Republican victor, Bob Turner, as a protest against Obama's Mideast meandering.

The result should scare the daylights out of the Dems, and the adults among them will get the message.  The problem is, there aren't too many adults left.  The Democratic Party has become hopelessly ideological, interested more in its theories than in results. 

Republicans can clearly capitalize on the discontent expressed yesterday.  Benjamin Franklin famously lectured the early citizens of this nation that they had "a republic, if you can keep it."  To Republicans we say, "You have an election, if you can win it."

September 14, 2011