Perhaps this will be the end of Christie’s career, but it’s hard to see how anyone can tell at this point, and there are several reasonable, and equally speculative, reasons this may blow over. Here we have a regional dispute that—contra Chait—is fairly arcane for non-locals: He closed down a few but not all lanes of a bridge that managed by a bi-state agency? Huh?. Iowans probably care even less for B&T folks than Manhattanites. Everyone already knows Christie is a bully, and it’s hard to see how many more people this will convince. And most important of all, there are almost exactly two years until the Iowa caucuses…

Christie isn’t invulnerable, as Chait notes: He’s an establishment-friendly northeastern Republican with moderate views on some issues. But the voters whom Bridgegate will scare away are different from the ones who abhor deviations from Tea Party orthodoxy. It’s probably wise to wait for further revelations—the sort that personally implicate Christie, or have people talking about resignation—or particularly vertiginous polling drops before writing the governor off. Especially since he apparently doesn’t take kindly to those who turn their backs on him.