Stuart Rothenberg, May 21, 2008:
Nor does the Mississippi 1st district result mean that “there is no district that is safe for Republican candidates,” as Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen said recently. That’s just silly hyperbole and something the Maryland Democrat undoubtedly will be embarrassed to have said.
NRCC Communications Director Karen Hanretty, June 25, 2008:
“This is a challenging environment,” she said. “Any Republican running for office has to run basically on an independent platform, localize the race and not take anything for granted. There are no safe Republican seats in this election.”
Republicans strategy has shifted to laying down and get kicked nonsensically till November.
I wonder how many members they will dump before crash landing into a small minority.
I don’t actually read his stuff, so I don’t quite know what the nature of his offense is. His unpopularity with y’all is pretty evident though.
Going off of this episode and Bowers’ 80 seats fracas alone though, is it just that he’s a hopeless literalist? Cause he missed the real meaning of Van Hollen’s comment entirely, and he seems to have missed Bowers’ point in the same way for the same reason.
It can be awkward to actually explain something like this, especially when you know Stewie may well drop in and read this thread, but I am kinda curious what the exact nature of his sins is.
In the ten House elections from 1986 through 2004, nine saw a swing of fewer than ten net seats. The exceptionm of course, was the Newt election of 1994. The “lesson” seemed to be that it was hard to turn over House seats under “modern” conditions.
Suddenly, we are looking at consecutive elections where the old rule that it took death or dynamite to change parties (except redistricting) no longer applies.
Of course, Rothenberg’s “normal” has not been normal for the life of the Republic. Only two of the ten elections immediately before his period saw fewer than ten seats change hands. And just two of the ten House elections before that. In fact, Rothenberg’s stability represents a period unique in the 200 plus years of the Republic. Never happened before.
Similarly, the pattern of tight Presidential elections revolving around a very small number of swing states is nearly as unique. Since the number of House seats was frozen at 435, the losing candidate has managed to get 250 or more electoral votes just three times: 1916,2000, and 2004. A back to back tight pattern occurred only once before in 1796 and 1800. No, as Paul Rosenberg has documented at Open Left, the natural pattern has been for parties to dominate both the Presidency and the legislature for (roughly) 40 yeat periods. The 1968-2008 period represented the only period without single party dominance.
Either we really have entered a period of permanent change or Stewie is so geared up to his period that he will totally miss the paradigm shift that is going on right under his nose. Which do you think?
and i don’t mean politically. they will always predict that the incumbent party will hold a seat until that party has a disastrous recruitment and the challenger party has a good candidate (IL-11, VA-11, NY-13).
larry sabato on the other hand – said the democrats would win 6 senate seats and 29 house seats on election day in ’06 and he got both numbers exactly right. so i read him a little more carefully.
people, though. it’s annoying especially when, as in this case, he doesn’t even have a legitimate point.
he’s guilty of silly hyperbole and he should be embarassed.
There are those states where House Districts are so gerrymandered that, indeed, GOP incumbents have a free pass.
Like, uh… mine, for example…
On the other hand, we ARE going to flip control of three House seats this fall but it will only bring us back to approximate parity, based on the overall voting patterns of the state.