I’ve gained a lot of respect for Silver. He may be a leftist but at least he is intellectually honest which is a rare thing indeed. He did very well in his projection of the last election and though none of us wanted to see the writing on the wall even though we had been acutely aware of Romney’s weaknesses which on election day materialized proving out our concerns.
Silver is right the impact of the shutdown is being overplayed just as many political events are. The unfortunate truth is that the apolitical masses are in a chronic state of ADHD and even many who are so called experts seem to have little or no context of history even from a few months ago. This is why when a politician leaves office he becomes more popular till people have often forgotten why they hated him and I’ve even seen the opposite situation occur where people forget why they liked a certain politician.
Right now Hillary has fairly high popularity because people see her as not bad in comparison to Obama. This is an example of how shifts in context occur. Go into a TV store that only has 30 & 40 inch TVs and they seem small when at one time they were considered absolutely enormous. Pick up a cell phone from 2 years ago and they seem woefully inadequate. Leftists understand that in order to shift society their direction they must push hard to the extreme left and marginalize what were traditional values whether they be work ethic, thrift, marriage, etc.
But back to the topic. This shutdown may not have clear political impact as far as Democrats winning versus GOP but there is definitely going to be fallout in the GOP primaries over this episode and since most of the fallout is going to happen in states where Democrats have little change of gaining the political effect will not be in shear numbers of Democrats versus Republicans but a more unified more conservative GOP.
it still does not address what would happen if a default does occur and enough of the US public thinks the Republicans caused it? That is a severe issue. I just don’t see how the Republican leadership can get the public on their side if a default does happen and it does collapse the economy and cause the worst Depression in our nation’s history. I don’t see how the Republicans would even be able to articulate why they are in the right -even though, of course, they would for sure be in the right - if a default happens and all the hysteria predictions about a default come true. Which is why i still find myself hoping a default does not happen and that the hysteria on the debt default is merely biased, unfounded hysteria. Otherwise, it means all the House GOP is between the ultimate rock and hard place as they could face masses of voting constituents turning on them no matter what they do. Which means they may very well not see the point in continuing the fight.