Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gap Fest for the 16th of July.

Friday, I'm John Dickerson here with Will Salatan in Washington, and Emily Bazelon is in New Haven.

This is our last gab fest from this little room, this little broom closet closet before we move across the hall to a bigger room.

Will it be air conditioned in the new room?

It will be apparently.

Wow.

Well, in fact, it'll be so chilly that we'll need space heaters.

Anyway, that's not so important.

The three topics we'll be talking about today are whether the Republicans will regain control of the House and we'll talk about some political polls that came out this week.

Then we're going to talk about Emily's piece in the New York Times Magazine about abortion providers.

And then we will talk about the NAACP and the resolution it passed at its annual convention calling on the Tea Party to condemn the racists or not tolerate racism among its activists.

So we will start first with a statement made by Robert Gibbs, the president's press secretary, on Meet the Press,

Sunday. This past Sunday, he was talking about the election, and he said, no doubt, there are enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control. Now, this is the equivalent in Washington of saying the sky is blue, right? He said there are enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control.

This was greeted by some Democrats, including many Democrats elected in House of Representatives,

with great anger and irritation, including Nancy Pelosi, who was very exercised in a private, you know, closed-door meeting with House Republicans.

Sorry, House Democrats.

Got very angry with Gibbs, made her anger known to the White House.

The White House, they had a meeting, the president, and his Democratic leaders in the House.

By Thursday afternoon, everybody was saying that Democrats are going to win.

Nancy Pelosi sent out a fundraising letter saying, you know, make no mistake about it. Democrats are going to win in November. And this was a totally, well, I won't get my opinion right away. Will Salatane, do you find anything objectionable in what the White House press secretary said? And if you do, John clearly thinks you're a big fool. No, no. I got to, okay, now this is, now, I'm coming in as an ignoramus here. My impression, from what I have read of this and what I've heard and what I've read of yours, what Gibbs said to me actually makes perfect political sense. First of all, it's true, but that's not the political point. The political point is you don't want to be the incumbent party in the present political environment. You want to have voters go into the booth. First of all, you want them to show up. But secondly, you want them to be thinking that there is a concrete alternative that failed and they didn't like, as opposed to just being unhappy with the fact that we're in a recession. So it makes perfect sense to me what Gibson. Now, what I would love for you to explain to me, John, is what the hell is Nancy Pelosi thinking? Why is it so terrible to point this out to scare people with the idea of John Boehner running the Congress? Well, I'll answer that quickly. Emily, do you want to add a thought before I give my little riff? Well, my question is, is she really mad?

Or does she just say that she's mad as like the continuing of the playing out of the politics, right?

That if she says she's mad, then it makes it seem as if the party really could be strong,

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