Tim Fernholz talks to Simon Rosenberg, the president of a progressive think tank who sees signs that November won’t be so bad for Democrats after all.
What is driving this change?
Democrats had a much more powerful closing argument than the other side that they just simply hadn’t deployed. Obama is using an economic argument. Democrats are reclaiming ground that they shouldn’t have lost in the first place because of their incredibly wobbly performance during 2010. … Now that they’re engaged, and now the reason I think Democrats are going to do OK (I’m not going to argue they’re going to pick up seats, but I don’t think this is going to be a wipeout), is that the Republican Party is still not offering solutions for the future, has incredibly unattractive leadership, is ideologically divided, has elected far too many fringe candidates, and is way over-reliant on outside plutocratic money, which I think in the long term is going to become really problematic for them, because if they win the majority, they will have won it based on the contribution of 50 to 100 really rich people, which is unsustainable for them as a political party in this Internet age.