Norman J. Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute and co-author with Thomas Mann of It's Even Worse Than It Looks, WaPo yesterday.

So maybe there is, I don't know, a 1.3% chance that something like this (or other disruptive scenarios that he likely thought it wise not to mention) could happen beginning in 10 days, instead of something a good deal less than that.  

As I indicated recently in recommending this book, Ornstein and Mann are two fixtures in DC, perhaps the closest thing we now have to a non-partisan DC political Establishment.  Which explains a few things about where we are now.  Publishing their book, which demolished the me-tooism charges that both political parties are equally at fault for the dysfunction in our federal government, was an act of courage, by the distinctly unheroic standards of what passes for courage in this town, and time.  They are institutionalists, not partisans.  They had had enough of the placid acceptance of the "both sides do it" nonsense that is in the way of breaking the dysfunction.