The Democrats seem to have shot themselves in the foot with this attack on gun rights.
I suspect the house is not going to flip.
There are 35 senate seats up for election in 2014 (33 plus the 2 special elections). There are 21 Democrat and 14 Republican seats up for reelection. 6 Democrats and 2 Republicans have announced they are not running for re-election.
I cannot identify any Republicans running in vulnerable states. I can identify several Democrats that are.
If the Democrats have successfully turned a regional issue into a partisan one they are worse for the wear.
Just counting the seats that are up for each party isn’t the most reliable indicator-- After all, this past cycle, the Democrats managed to hold off against such odds.
Yeah, we heard a lot about the common wisdom that Obama couldn’t win with unemployment over 8% (or 7% or whatever the talking point was). So much for common wisdom.
High public approval for the concept of background checks. The only poll on the actual legislation asked people how they felt about its defeat. 47% were angry, 38% were happy it was defeated. And guess who was most likely to be happy? People from the regions where Democrats voted “no”. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/04/24/why-the-american-public-isnt-mad-as-hell-about-the-failure-of-the-gun-bill-in-numbers/
But IMO, the cat is out of the bag. Gun control hasn’t been an issue in awhile, and Democrats tried hard to make sure it wasn’t an issue. Now they’ve voluntarily made themselves the party of gun control again. That’s not going to go over well in the states Democrats don’t already dominate in.
I dunno. Even here in Georgia, most people favor background checks … they think it’s a GOOD thing that maniacs and criminals should not be able to get guns. Don’t know that they’ll swallow the NRA talking point that such legislation is “gun control.”
Yeah, people favor background checks here in Virginia too. But after the display of anti-gun behaviour we saw from Feinstein and friends over the last few months, they seem pretty agnostic on the Manchin Toomey vote. Noone here thinks that enforcing background checks at gun shows is going to slow the flow of guns to crimainls even a little bit.
How many guns used in crime do you think are purchased at gun shows? What percentage of guns owned by felons or other prohibited persons do you think were purchased at gun shows?
Everyone favors background checks, just as “everyone” favors a late term abortion ban:
Doesn’t mean there’s not a political price to pay for passing one among people who are concerned about gun or abortion rights. The issue is trust. Gun owners don’t trust Democrats. Pro-choicers don’t trust Republicans. So passing a bill raises the saliency of the issue.