| First, the House: I posted my diary using a rudimentary Cook-based model to "predict" a net loss of 49 seats. Until tonight I have spent the last month in rising hope that maybe we could buck the tide just enough to keep the House by the skin of our teeth. But further readings and taking a step back and considering the state of whatever House race polling we have, I am now surrendering once again my hope of keeping the House. I'd hit a bottom on Labor Day weekend with all the rock-bottom generic ballot numbers that popped up around then. But then September gave us more positive information, and things started to look better. But going through StephenCLE's diary tonight left me resigned. He pegs our net losses in the mid-30s, and I count several more losses that he sees still ending up our way. I now think also our pickups, to offset GOP gains, will be limited to the Big 4 of beating Cao and Djou and taking DE-AL and IL-10. I don't completely write off the possibility of one or two upsets somewhere by Garcia or Bera or Goyle or someone else, but the odds are long at this point, I think. Garcia is our best bet, I still give him a 50-50 shot, but I suspect the bad economy tips the scale against us. That Sink has fallen behind Scott, and Rubio has taken firm command of the Senate race, both hurt him. All this is to say that while I have been saying the odds of a GOP takeover are "just" 55-60%, I now push those odds all the way up to 80%.
Now, the Senate: this is where depression is kicking in more heavily tonight. I've conceded for awhile 2 separate tiers of 3 seats each. Tier I is ND, AR, and IN. Tier II is CO, WI, and PA. But I now am counting a couple Tier III seats, WV and IL, as losses. Even in IL, Obama's job approval has slipped to mere mortal levels. Yes I see Brady has gained ground and Alexi is still in a legitimate pure tossup and it's a Democratic state and the Chicago machine still can come through. I don't write off IL, nor do I write off Manchin's chances of turning around WV. And PPP today gave us hope in CO. But all that said, if I have to make bottom-line predictions, I now have to call all these seats losses in a very strong anti-Democratic wave. If we're really going to lose more than 40 House seats, then it's likely the Senate seats, too, will be on the higher side of what's realistically possible rather than the lower side. So I'm now seeing a loss of 8 Senate seats, with no takeovers.
My one Senate wildcard: I now think our best chance of a takeover is actually AK. The major party candidates are little-known, it's a late-developing race, and it's a complicated 3-way where voter preference can change quickly and unpredictably. That contrasts to ALL other races where we're fighting for our lives; in all other hardly-fought races, there has been a lot of heavy campaigning by both sides for a long time, and voters are pretty familiar with the candidates and just not likely to shift our way in just the last month absent some unexpected external event driving them.
It's going to be a tough night, and I don't write off the possibility that things could be better than this. But I'm bracing emotionally for a depressing night. The only positive takeaways I forsee is that still barely holding the Senate and controlling the floor is worth A LOT and nothing I take for granted, and that Obama's reelection chances really will be enhanced by voters having gotten their pound of flesh and finally settling down. There's something to be said for the argument that if we hang on to both the House and Senate, we're still tagged with all the blame for whatever follows, and voters will feel they weren't heard by our retaining our majorities and might take it out on us even more strongly in 2012.
There really is an emerging Democratic majority, but it's emerging slowly. I think a lot of us let 2008 mislead us because Obama effectively accelerated, through the power of his own persona, a process of changing the electorate that otherwise would happen naturally only much more slowly. The 2008 electorate was what we'd see in 2016 or 2020 if it wasn't for Obama. We might see no growth in Democratic-favoring demographic groups in the electorate in 2016, as Obama is succeeded probably (not necessarily but the odds support this) by a white male as the Democratic Presidential nominee. For this year, we're going to see any natural uptick in Democratic-favoring turnout from demographic change over the past 4 years offset, and perhaps more than offset, by depressed turnout from the unfavorable environment and lack of urgency among key voters.
I'm very interested in all of your thoughts on this subject. |
