i think you can assume they ve done just everything they could possibly do to keep the olympics safe. and that s not a guarantee. sochi is a fairly small place. it is a contained place. so i agree with ambassador negroponte, they probably can protect sochi. whether they can protect the whole country, whether something else can happen during the olympics in another russian city, it s a totally different question. nick? the one thing putin is good at, it s cracking down on his own country. i think sochi will be safe. nick burns, john negroponte, dmitri simes, thank you for coming. the u.s. ambassador to russia michael mcfaul joins fareed zakaria at the top of the hour. next, eric holder announces a landmark change involving the country s same-sex married couples. our panel on the policy and the politics when we come back. [ male announcer ] this is the cat that drank the milk. [ meows ]
work. there are a lot of things that have to come together for that kind of change to happen. let s talk about that. the democrats control the state house and the governorship, david, but if you look at the breakdown, 1.24 million colorado residents are unaffiliated. and then basically it s even, 1.12 million republicans, 1.11 democrats. but you quote the denver post publisher dean singleton. he says, this is a republican, i think colorado is probably a democratic state from now on. it is a democratic state today and i don t think it s going back. how have democrats managed to make such inroads, given the breakdown of the party affiliations among the residents? i think the democrats have done a better job of appealing to independents and to richard s point earlier, the culture has moved away from the republican party. colorado is the home of focus on the family. it has a huge christian right elementary to its politics, and yet we re passing civil unions. we re having a discussion
refreshing change from what we ve seen when what was it, the friends of hamas claim against secretary hagel or michele bachma bachmann s attack on a worker for hillary clinton. so bill o reilly one time called her out. part of this is the republican party has got do break their addiction to the bill o reilly. to crazy. to you know, rush limbaugh and i don t know, check a few facts, do a little math here and there. are they going to break, are they still hooked on crazy, richard? they are. i think it s very hard to go cold turkey on that. what will happen for some of us. you know when you, when you think about how, lest we forget, michele bachmann rose to such a position. it was being a presidential candidate. what is to stop her or people like her? what is the difference between her and some of the claims that ted cruz has made? these are prominent people, they will get a platform and some of the things that we used to say
there s some other issues happening outside the state capital. there s push to ban fracking in a number of communities, republican and democratic communities. there s now a debate happening in the legislature over the death penalty. so and of course the marijuana issue is an issue that doesn t just appeal to progressives, but appeal to a lot of the west libertarian spirit. so there s a big convergence happening here that s demographic and i think kind of a convergence of a political moment. sam, i want to talk to you about this as we talk about red america, blue america and purple america. the fact that colorado is seeing this kind of landmark change in such a short period of time, what does that mean? we talked about the republican party and where its future may lie in the show. but this would seem to be an alarm bell ringing quite loudly for the gop. it seems to be my function today to drop emi obscure names, i ve got two also connected with a the new republic, john
what s really gone on here i think is that democrats have fought the good fight on a lot of issues for a number of years. when they were out in the wilderness. and after fighting and fighting and fighting, now that they are in control of the legislature, in control of some of the politics, the groups that have been fighting toor that change are taking advantage and rightly so. because frankly, that s what the public voted for in this state when they voted repeatedly for democrats. you know, david before we let you go. the thing that s a piece of this, highly underdiscussed is the control by one party of both the governorship and the state legislature. i think the statistic is staggering. in 2004, 30 states had divided government. in 2013, 37 states are under one-party rule. the implications there for democracy writ large, it s somewhat disconcerting. i wonder what you make of it. certainly a lot more gets done, if you will. but you know, in terms of having a balance of power, it seem