There was a great discussion yesterday about the dynamics changing our state and national political expectations. Reproduced here are a couple of comments from Norm Ornstein, AEI, and Charlie Cook of the "Cook Political Report."
House majority in '14?
Charlie Cook: I think a lot of people are kind of getting ahead of their skis a little bit on this because it's still very, very, very hard for Republicans to lose their majority. I mean, right now, you know, in our rating -- and this is after we've moved about 14, 15 races over -- Democrats would have to win 24 out of 24 of their own competitive seats and then win 14 out of 15 Republican ones.Now, that's not impossible, but that's a pretty tall order. Now, if we had two or three more shutdowns between now and the next election, that could change things. If you see this morning we had Congressman Tim Griffin from Arkansas, a young guy, you know, second term, announce his retirement. If you start seeing some members retiring that are in potentially competitive districts, and, you know, there's sort of -- and if Democratic recruiting does, in fact, pick up a lot, then that could change things. But it's not there right now.___"People believe weird things"Norm Ornstein: The homogeneity of these [Congressional] districts may be just as important as the safeness of the seats because they become homogenous echo chambers. It's that people are living with likeminded others, and I think some of it is a desire to be with people who are like you. You know, here in Washington, dinner parties now get sorted out so that you don't have Democrats and Republicans together, or you could end up with a food fight.The nature of the modern media, the tribal media, along with the amplification of the social media, you talk to some of these members. When they go back home, what they're hearing from their constituents, who get all their information from Rush Limbaugh or local talk radio hosts who are way more radical than Rush, and then the emails that they get that are, you know, headed "can-you-believe-this", which is a key to believing that you should believe it -- but people believe weird things.
