Maybe in 2014?

Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen predicted yesterday on Current TV that because of a shortage of GOP votes, a House assault weapons bill is likely to fail next year, and at any rate, to paraphrase Cohen, "the Republican leadership ... wouldn’t schedule the bill to be voted on."

The timing of such Republican indifference and even hostility to the nation's social welfare should roughly coincide with Republicans' indifference and hostility to the nation's economic welfare--i.e., either an extended denial of a debt-ceiling hike or the prolonged, needlessly teasing torture of one.  

These two immensely irresponsible acts alone should be enough for Democrats to effectively use--as the bluntest of propagandistic instruments--in 2014 against the GOP House majority. True, many districts are hopeless; yet others--especially those undergoing similar demographic trends to the country's at large--are, almost by the hour, becoming increasingly horrified by the political obscenity they hath wrought.  

Hence 2014 could, quite realistically, represent the final throe of this particularly monstrous amalgamation of Puritans, Randians, corporatists, nihilists, anarchists, Borks, racists, gun freaks, conspiracy theorists, misogynists, xenophobes and homophobes. Then a conservative-party rebuilding could begin, which is just as essential to a healthy Democratic Party as it is to any authentic conservatism. But first, the monster must be destroyed.

Comments

[japa21]

I think a look at 2010 shows what can be done (even with some of the gerrymandering that took place after 2010). The Republicans took back a lot of Dem seats, many of which had been considered relatively safe.

Two things happened which caused this to be able to occur. The first is that the GOP, riding the back of the TP, flogged the ACA to death, what with talk of death panels and what not. And secondly, many Dem candidates refused to defend what they had done. This, in fact, help cement the GOP claims about the ACA being indefensible.

The Dems, this time around, need to flog the GOP's onstruction of the economy and obstruction of any reasonable gun control measures to death. Oh, I can hear the RW's response already. "They are politicizing the death of children." So what. Screw them.

Because that is the only defense they will have. They won't be able to have any actual defenses or rationales that people, except those already so paranoid it won't make any difference, will accept.

It requires the Dem candidates to have a spine and make sure that whenever the media says "Congress defeated Gun Control" to make it super clear it wasn't Congress, it was the Republicans in Congress.

[Peter G]

Why yes that is an excellent appraisal. If I might add one more thing that ices the cake. The Republican state leaderships seem to be determined to to chip away at the one demographic group where they actually had some sway, white middle class males. I do not know what possessed the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan to pursue unpopular right to work legislation but I don't think they are very wise to do so. Unless of course you have been in that milieu it is sometimes hard to understand how very threatened unionized workers in manufacturing really feel. Their leadership notwithstanding a lot of these people are very very conservative in both their social and economic outlooks. Hence the success and importance of the "welfare bum" meme when the Republicans make their pitch for blue collar votes. It was pretty evident in Wisconsin that there must have been a lot of unionized workers who voted Republican once they got into the voting booth. And they were the same group that helped elect Reagan once upon a time. There won't be very many of these apostates left once the Republicans are done.

[Robert Lipscomb]

The GOP learned in 2006 that gerrymandering is a two-edged sword. Gerrymandering tends to create several 55% majority districts which can be lst during a political swing election.