Jolly good of them:

Last cycle, GOP Rep. Michael G. Grimm won re-election by more than dozen points in the face of a 20-count indictment and millions of dollars of Democratic attack ads. After the election, Grimm pleaded guilty to one count of tax fraud and earlier this month resigned from Congress, setting up what looked like yet another competitive special election in the Empire State.

Democrats were preparing to nominate former Rep. Michael E. McMahon or Assemblyman Michael Cusick in order to put the seat into play and, at a minimum, lay the foundation for a full takeover push in the 2016 general election. But Cusick told the Staten Island Advance Sunday he is not running, and McMahon has dialed back his initial interest to nearly zero.

Possibly because the the polling on this one shows Generic Republican beating Generic Democrat in NY-11 by double digits; when actual names were involved the lead doubled.  Worse for Democrats, that was a leaked DCCC internal. Stu Rothenberg thinks that the DCCC itself leaked the poll in order to justify the national committee’s pending decision to pretend that Staten Island doesn’t actually exist in the first place; it’s hard to argue with Stu. Or, indeed, the DCCC.

But, hey! Remember when the Democrats used to brag that they had the magic touch when it came to special elections? – Go figure.  What makes it even funnier is that that reputation was based on Democratic performances in New York special elections…

Via Instapundit. Image via Shutterstock.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Let me expand on that last paragraph a little. What does it say that the Democratic party has looked at what was essentially a gimme seat  in NY-11 – the incumbent resigned in disgrace after pleading guilty to tax fraud, likely GOP replacement candidate Daniel Donovan comes pre-loaded with a history guaranteed to set off the Democratic base, and Barack Obama actually won the district in 2012 – and instead have visibly decided to give up on it? I’ll not beat around the bush: it says that the Democrats in general and the DCCC still don’t have their acts together. Which is, of course, great news: because at this rate they won’t even start to wise up until at least 2017…