re: #82 jamesfirecat

I don’t see NY23 writ large in 2010. NY is an oddball place with funny laws and lots of goofy little parties already on the ticket, so going third party is pretty easy there. But I do not believe that such is the case elsewhere. I agree with you that where that happens, it is all upside for the D’s. But I think that ends up happening in only a handful of districts.

Third parties are hard. The two big parties have spent the last 150 years making it so.

Instead I see teabaggers simply being a further manifestation of the usual dynamic in the primaries: you cater to the base there and then tack to the center later. It will be fun to see how many of them can win a primary. I haven’t seen much evidence of political skill there (I don’t consider carrying stupid signs and screaming at speakers in hotel conference rooms to be signs of political skill), so I don’t expect much from them. But you never know. In a world where Glenn Beck gets a TV show, anything can happen.