Sabato’s Crystal Ball: WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS
Looking at the Big Picture in the House
Because one Crystal Ball analysis piece (We Were Merely Freshmen?) laced with references to popular music deserves another, we decided to take our readers back in time this week and tip our hat to an old blues song Led Zeppelin revived in 1971. The first lines should be familiar to many a Robert Plant die-hard in our readership:
“If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
When the levee breaks, I’ll have no place to stay”Certainly, Nancy Pelosi and company had much happier tunes in their heads when they wrested leadership gavels from across the aisle earlier this year. But when the floodgates opened to new majority-making Democratic legislators following the wave of 2006, you can be sure many Republicans left without places to stay were singing the blues. Dazed and confused members of the GOP had never imagined such a powerful storm would wash them out to sea, given all of the structural advantages the party had enjoyed at the outset of 2005.
