re: #39 darthstar

Christie’s actually playing it smart. You can’t win the general with the GOP base. You can, however, win the general if you bring the swing vote over to your side. And Christie knows that the GOP is doing its best to get its ass handed to it in 2014, so there will be a huge fucking reset going into 2016, with moderation being the new right. It’s going to be tough for whoever is the Democratic candidate, and I hope that Rand Paul or someone insane is on the GOP ticket, because a reinvented GOP will get a strong backwind from the media as they love to see a close contest (hence the Romney could beat Obama bullshit for six months).

No. Between gerrymandering and all the elections being local (for all intents and purposes) this won’t happen — barring, that is, some event that turns it into a national referendum.

The more I study the more I think it won’t really get any better in 2016, either. I think a Dem will win at the presidential level (because the Rep side will still be dominated by the far right) and I think the Dems will continue to hold the Senate (because for the most part the states aren’t wholly tea party residences), but we won’t see the house cleaned up till 2022 at the earliest. That’s the set of elections that occur after the next census, when various redistricting may break some of the gerrymandering.

Caveats: national fix to voting, aforementioned “national referendum”, Cruz for Texas Governor, etc.

(adding to already too long - if Cruz runs for Texas Governor he’ll excite the underperforming hispanic base. It might be enough to flip the state from red to blue, but only barely and so turning Texas into a national battleground. While it’s happening, however, the whole issue of gerrymandering will be revisited given Texas is the state that ‘proved’ redistricting can happen between censuses.)