Individual race analysis is telling him 40+ lost in the House and the national totals are even better. Well, better from a certain point of view, which is not one currently shared by the Democratic party.
How bad is it? This bad:
| 2006 | 2008 | 2010 | ||||
| Dem | GOP | Dem | GOP | Dem | GOP | |
| Likely D | 11 | 0 | 13 | 2 | 22 | 0 |
| Lean D | 9 | 1 | 10 | 3 | 29 | 1 |
| Toss-Up | 0 | 19 | 8 | 19 | 46 | 3 |
| Lean R | 0 | 15 | 0 | 14 | 2 | 4 |
| Likely R | 0 | 20 | 0 | 20 | 4 | 9 |
| 20 | 55 | 31 | 58 | 103 | 17 | |
The numbers above are taken from the latest 2010 Cook Competitive Race Chart and its closest equivalents in 2006 and 2008. I’ll spare you the triumphalism and simply note that anybody who tells you that the Democratic party is planning an offensive this year is out of his or her mind. They don’t have the money to simultaneously defend their at-risk seats and engage the GOP in any more than a literal handful of districts; in fact, they don’t have the money to defend all their at-risk seats. Odd to write that out, but it’s true: the first political death panels are convening, and there’s going to be some baffled, angry, and soon to be ex- freshman and sophomore legislators out there soon. You can imagine how upset I am on their behalf…
Moe Lane
PS: By the way: this is what happens when you visibly don’t give a tinker’s dam about public opinion when you’re ramming deeply unpopular legislation down the electorate’s throat. You get spanked.
more! MORE! I want to go full Conan on these bastards.
Heh. Know what I noticed first?
Their at-risk number this year is only ten less than our combined totals of at-risk seats in the last two elections.
Dear lord, this is going to be epic 😀
Moe, I just did some rudimentary math: If one took only the leaners and toss-ups in 2006, the Dems got 30 of a total of 35. That is approximately 86% of those leaners/tossups in ’06.
If one were to be charitable, the 4 Dem seats that are already Likely Republican could be cancelled out by those 4 GOP seats that are Toss-Up/Lean Dem. Which would mean 77 Dem seats that are either Leaners or Toss-Up.
My calculator sez that if the GOP matched the 86% success rate on taking Leaners/Tossups that the Dems did in ’06, that would be a gain of 66 SEATS. For a grand total of 245.
By comparison, the 80th Congress, which is the modern era highwater mark for the GOP in the House, had 248 GOP members at the start in January 1947.
Yeah. It’s stuff like this that actually worries us: this is almost too good. You keep expecting them to pull out of their dive.
And what could pull them out of their dive, short of a Cuban Missile Crisis-type of crisis? The September unemployment report (due Oct.8) is going to be of no help if it’s good, and lots of harm if it’s in line with the previous ones.
Yeah, it appears to be too good, but if the American people are hellbent-for-leather to get a check on Barack Obama….