I will believe it when I see it, but that’s the buzz right now: “[CNN’s John King was] told the Florida special election results were the last straw for at least two and perhaps more House Democrats facing tough 2014 races.” The problem with that is that it’s late for retirements; primary season has already started and at this point anybody who retires is going to put his or her party through an unseemly scramble to find a replacement. Pulling this on the Democratic party would be highly obnoxious, in other words; and while I don’t personally care I can still say that it’s not very professional to put your caucus through that sort of thing.

But leaving that aside… if I had to guess as to who would be dropping I’d say Nick Rahall of West Virginia and Collin Peterson of Minnesota.  The former is sliding into electoral oblivion in the polls and the latter is making an announcement on the matter tomorrow.  Mind you, Peterson may simply taking advantage of the speculation to score free publicity, which would be smart of him.  Guess we’ll see?

Via

RT @PoliticalTicker: #InsidePolitics: The Political Forecast: More Democrats to retire this week | http://t.co/lnjtLhMIqj

— Melissa Clouthier (@MelissaTweets) March 16, 2014

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: If there are significant retirements then the Democrats would be well-advised to not only give up on the House, but the Senate as well: they should immediately retreat to the governors’ and state legislature races and pour all of their resources into them. Admittedly, they won’t see dividends on that until at least 2018… but then, nobody told them to put all of their freaking chips on Obamacare in the first place.

PPS: Do you really think that I’d offer this advice if I thought that the Democrats would take it?