Colorado recall votes bode ill for 2014 and 2016.
The public has accepted the RW as legit and we still think they are just the a fringe group.
The election map will have very few blue states for the next 12 yrs.
= new reply since forum marked as read
you'd think so.
I'm pro gun control, but I also know when to cut bait and run.
These 2 Democrats very obviously didn't listen to what their constituents wanted in the way of gun control laws and they paid the price.
All my children are grown and gone, but I have a black cat that will run and hide in the closet at the first thunder boomie. 
It's all about the gamesmanship. It goes something like this. Republicans cannot compete in major presidential-type elections in many places they need to compete in order to remain viable. So...they lose in major election years; they're going to continue to lose in major election years. They're going to continue to lose on big issues too on the national scale. The tide is against them and rather than fighting back to the center, they're letting it pull them further out for fear of losing a shrinking voting base of reactionary conservatives. (Very old people and Christians...both are on the decline.) In fact, their ability to win off-season elections is constantly decreasing and will continue to decrease because all the motivation in the world will not cover up for their lack of ability to attract new young Republicans at a fast enough rate to offset their death-attrition. If they don't change tack, they're going to wake up soon and find they've got a CAGOP problem nationally...not enough Republicans to be relevant and too irrelevant to be in position to stop their attrition.
What they do have is a high-motivation reserve based on angst over their increasing marginalization. (This is universal, the waning party always has this in ever-increasing degrees as they watch the opposition do what they consider "ruining America"
This plays into the fact they also have an innocuous tool called the recall that very few on the left realize is fucking awful for Democrats currently because it creates even-more-off-season elections. In all but the most liberal Democratic-lock places recalls are surefire wins for the Republicans consistently. High-motivation is directly causative of impetus to vote...they vote in the elections they're going to get crushed in, but they turn out in nearly the same numbers for the off-year and recall elections.
The dominant party does not...we're by-and-large not as angry or motivated as they are...we have our President in the White House, we're seeing our policy initiative needs met (Hooray marriage equality, huzzah capital-punishment repeal, three cheers for gun control, chip chip cheerio Obamacare!), we win more partisan fights than we lose. Life is pretty good. We don't have that drive to combat them "ruining America."
Further, it does not take a large portion of the population of a district to issue a recall...that could have been achieved solely out of the voter-pool of the district that supported the loser in the last election. Consider these factors together...it only takes the losing Republican voters from the last election to recall an elected official and Republicans are highly-motivated to turn out for a very-off-cycle election while Democrats are highly-unmotivated to turn out. Does it make more sense to take away from the recall election that the reason we lost seats in the recall was because the very occurrence of the recall favored the Republicans or to take away that we lost the recall because we passed gun control that the majority of the residents of those districts support? When you get the answer to that one, it's a short leap to figure put why 2014 and 2016 do not favor the Republicans. (Hint: Their turnout remains steady...ours goes from being smaller than theirs to much larger than theirs.)
For a forum full of political wonks, it's mildly irritating to have to explain to you why you're all Chicken Littling. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! We lost an election we were certain to lose the moment the petitions were filed, no matter how much money we spent or GOTV we did or the conditions on the ground. The Republicans know this...they know recalls favor them when it's Democrats being recalled...and recalls favor them when it's Republicans being recalled. That's why the number of recalls is increasing. It's why they support recall statutes in the states. It's why they don't fight Democrats too hard when Democrats try to pass recall statutes.
Recalls, midterms and special elections are the only way they're keeping themselves in it...it's going to continue to be. We're going to win the WH again in 2016 and probably pick up seats everywhere due to coattails; they going to chip themselves back into spitting range in both the state legislatures and Congress through midterms, recalls and special elections. There is some sense they may even do the almost-unprecedented and lose seats in the midterms.