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Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder - Marc Ambinder is the White House correspondent for National Journal and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. More

Marc Ambinder is the White House correspondent for National Journal. He previously served as the politics editor, and is now a contributing editor, for The Atlantic, where he curated the influential Politics channel on TheAtlantic.com and contributed to the magazine. He was also a chief political consultant to CBS News. Earlier, at NJ's Hotline, Ambinder was the founding editor of "Hotline On Call," a pathbreaking political news blog. He also worked as a producer and reporter for the ABC News Political Unit and was one of the founders of ABC's "The Note." Born in New York City, raised in Central Florida, Ambinder is a 2001 graduate of Harvard and lives in Washington, D.C.
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Ask The Blogger: A Phase Change For Republicans?

By Marc Ambinder

Apr 28 2009, 10:05 AM ET Comment

A reader asks:

The notion occurred to me and your scientific literacy compelled me to

share. The Republican Party according to Chris Cillizza is now 21% of

the population. We don't have a lot of precedent for such low party ID

numbers, but does a decline in party ID always have a merely

proportionate effect on its influence? Or at some point does a small

marginal change have a dramatic effect, akin to a phase change in

physics? If there is such a point, did we just pass it?


I love this question and this metaphor. But I don't think it is an accurate way to describe the world... in part because there are plenty of conservatives who will vote Republican but who won't tell pollsters they're Republican because of the brand identity.  I think the phase change metaphor applies to one set of numbers:  the percentage of the time the leaders of the Senate can get 60 votes. If there are 60 Democratic senators, everything changes instantly. 59 senators... not so much. The real phrase change in American politics could occur in 2010... That said, the Republican shrinkage phenom is real, and it's one reason why Americans are giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, policy-wise.

 

 



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