Colorado is the place to be it seems in the 2014 elections - MSNBC's Chuck Todd had a Colorado native and NBC news guy and three-term Denver mayor Wellington Webb on to take a "deep dive" into the dynamics shaping the 2014 campaign and the phrase used to describe the state was "The bellwether of bellwethers".
The state has swung between Democrats in the 1970s/80s to a religious right takeover in the mid-late 80s through the 1990s and into the 2000s before more recently Dems have taken back the state. And now the state is a case study for marijuana legaliztion, marriage equality (with Dem Governor Hickenlooper publicly supporting marriage equality in the past few weeks), abortion (with a personhood amendment on the November ballot) and, of course, guns.
I suggest watching this segment to get a good understanding of how and why Colorado has become the swing state to watch this year:
http://blogs.denverpost.com/...
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The gun issue did come up and no one other than Todd seemed to want to talk about it, which is strange because his NBC news guests is a political analyst. Maybe this could be a sign that Todd's guests think it isn't going to cause problems for Dems, or it could simply be the standard Modus Operandi whenever asked about guns to move on, or it simply is just one of many controversial issues (personhood, medicare/ACA, marriage equality, the Dream Act and more) the electorate will be faced with and it's difficult to measure how all those cross currents will be reconciled in the voting booth — or kitchen table, because Colorado is a majority all mail-in voting state.
Webb addressed the gun issue by acknowledging it's an issue, and then putting it the context of a number of other equally important issues where GOP extremism will make it unpalatable to be a single issue voter on guns alone.
Any Dem wondering how to answer questions about guns should take a look at how Webb handled it - he is quite good.