COMING SOON: ANOTHER PHONY REFERENDUM ON OBAMA?

Oh crap, I wasn't thinking about this -- a thoroughly predictable election result could soon be spun as a stinging defeat for Obama:

Massa's resignation sets up another Obama referendum upstate

... The stage has been set for another national referendum on President Obama's administration and health care reform, again in upstate New York.

Er, no. Eric Massa's district leans Republican. Even in the wave election of 2006 that ended GOP rule in Congress, Republican Randy Kuhl won, despite the fact that it was known that he'd once pulled a shotgun on his wife at a party, despite his praise for the Bush administration's handling of Katrina, and despite the fact that the increasingly despised Bush and Cheney campaigned for him. If that campaign strategy worked, we're talking a rather right-leaning district. In the even wavier election of 2008, Eric Massa did manage to beat Kuhl, but by only 2 points, while John McCain won the district.

And now Massa is in disgrace. And, of course, Democrats all over New York State are in disgrace.

And yet the right is going to spin this as (a) a surprise win for the GOP in the Northeast and therefore (b) a stinging rebuke to Obamaism, as well as (c) a do-over of the special election in NY-23, with the Doug Hoffman substitute winning this time.

And, alas, the mainstream press will probably retransmit that spin completely unedited.