This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," September 14, 2011. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOB TURNER, R - N.Y., REPRESENTATIVE-ELECT: I believe the country is on the wrong course badly. And the White House is not provided the leadership or the policies to correct it. Jobs and the economy were still the overarching issue, but Israel was very important to a large number of people. And they do not trust this president.
REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CA, HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: It's one election. Don't read too much into it. Certainly it's a disappointment to us not to have that seat in the Democratic column. It's a local election between two people who were known to the district. Again, we would like to have won it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi talking about the win for Republicans in New York, Congressional District Nine, also, the other win is in Nevada.
Before the break, we asked you, are the GOP wins in New York and Nevada elections harbingers of things to come for Democrats or just local races? 97 percent of you say forecasting the future, three percent said local races in this unscientific online poll.
Here are the results. NY-9 Nine, Bob Turner, the Republican, won with 54 percent of the vote over Democrat David Weprin, and in NV-2, Mark Amodei defeated Kate Marshall, the Democrat, 58 percent to 36 percent. We're back with the panel. Charles?
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, in NY-9, the Democrats went down this morning into the coalmine and discovered a dead canary, extremely dead, deceased, terminated. It was no more. This was a whomping, terrible defeat.
You think in 2010, which was a true Republican tsunami, the Democrats held the seat by 20 points. It's been held since 1923. And they lost by eight. It's obviously -- there are several reasons. Obviously it's a rebuke against the president and his economic stewardship. Secondly, the most heavily Jewish district in America, a rebuke against the president hostility, hostile policy against Israel.
But lastly, I think there's a message here that what the Democrats had assumed would be the magic bullet for the next election, the Medi-scare campaign which succeeded in NY-29 after the Ryan plan was revealed, may not work. And in part it could be because in the debt negotiations, Obama at least had the White House indicate that he would cut entitlements, even though he never put it on the table. And that might have sent a message that yes, Republicans want to cut entitlements in one way, but Obama perhaps another way, and I think it may have neutralized that issue. And if the Democrats are liking Medi-scare and nine percent unemployment, one percent economic expansion, and huge amount of debt, they have nothing.
BAIER: Juan, despite what was said publicly, privately even some Democrats look at NY-9 and say there are concerns here.
JUAN WILLIAMS, SENIOR EDITOR, THE HILL: Oh, yeah. And I think everybody is saying there are concerns. Nancy Pelosi said very clearly, they wanted to win. And there was an infusion of Democratic money into that race in the last week, that made it clear they thought that they had a chance to win. And clearly there was no chance. Those numbers are pretty strong.
The key thing is here, one, the Medicare business, that that was what you saw brought out as the card to defeat the Republican. It has worked in upstate New York quite recently in the immediate aftermath of Paul Ryan's budget proposal. It did not work here.
There are lots of issues about all politics being local. If you look at the reality of what Weprin had done as state assemblyman, he had voted for same-sex marriage, the orthodox Jews in the area didn't like it. They are a big player in this marketplace. Secondly in terms of Israel, ya know, Anthony Weiner had been very strong on Israel. Questions now rose about how strong would Weprin have been in terms of Israel. Would he be following the president's mark the Democrats on this question? And then finally --
BAIER: Excuse me for interrupting, but does that not raise alarm bells in the Democratic Party for Florida? And for other places where there's a heavy Jewish vote?
WILLIAMS: Yeah, it does. And that's part of it, although this is an orthodox Jewish community and very strong on this one and dominant, I don't think they're dominant in Florida. But it raises question about the Jewish community's backing for President Obama, who has been pretty clear that he's a big supporter but at the same time said there's limits to what Israel should be allowed to do. That's the problem.
The other thing to say is that in Nevada, I think that may even be although people are reacting to the news in New York as the bellwether, it's what happened in Nevada that may be the bellwether. If you can't win with a very interesting, attractive candidate, against a not very interesting Republican in Nevada, up where all the retirees live, that is a tough one.
BAIER: Yeah Steve, the Nevada race is being spun as a Republican race. Republicans had the upper hand going in. But in the big picture, Nevada plays in the Democratic card whether it's a blue or red state.
STEVE HAYES, SENIOR WRITER, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: Crucial, I think, to the 2012 presidential election. If you look in the district at Washoe County, you have President Bush who won the county, 51-47 percent over John Kerry. You have President Obama who won it by 12 in 2008 over John McCain, and you have Amodei who won it by ten points this time. So we have seen a fairly significantly shift that I think reflects what we saw in the 2010 elections.
Just to expand a bit on what both Juan and Charles said about the Medi-care -- the Medi-scare issue, we are beginning to see a pattern. It may be early to call it a definitive pattern, but going into 2012, we've now seen several cases in which the Medi-scare issue just hasn't worked. It did not work in the Wisconsin recalls. Remember, that is what that was about. You have in this case, you have Turner, who said basically if he had a role model in Congress, it would be Paul Ryan. That was featured in a Democratic ad and it didn't do any good. So I think you're starting to see a pattern here, it will be interesting to see if it holds up through the 2012 election.
BAIER: We will continue this discussion, talk more about 2012 on the online show that follows this broadcast. There you go -- Foxnews.com/SRonline. That's it for the panel here, but stay tuned for a newcomer to politics and apparently TV.
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