Seriously.

I KNOW!  People seemed too depressed over the loss tonight.  These are two ruby-red districts, and there are a good 40+ seats we are targetting in 2008 that have stronger candidates, weaker incumbents, and/or a more welcoming district for Democrats.  How much money are they going to have to spend to stop from losing so many districts?  Republicans are going to tout these two races as big victories, fending off the dirty liberals, and as if this is some major indicator that the political atmosphere is decisively changing.  

I've had predictions for awhile, but I'm going to post them again.  I'm predicting 5-10 Senate pickups, and 25-35 House Pickups.  Nothing less.  Republicans are going to nominate a candidate with next to no money or infrastructure, (Huckabee) or a candidate who has flopped on major issues and has gotten nowhere with donating 17 million dollars to his own campaign (Romney).  Both of these candidates only have about 10% cross over appeal, compared to McCain and Giuliani who have closer to 20+%.  I'm expecting a dumb Republican party to get even dumber.  

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by: JeremiahTheMessiah @ Wed Dec 12, 2007 at 01:09:16 AM CST

Prudence is required here though

I think that both predictions are being too optimistic (particularly the House number). Granted I'm not following the House nearly as closely as I am the Senate, but to do that would require us to perfectly sweep all the Toss-ups and Lean Republican seats (all this while keeping all of our leaners).

In a presidential year, there is going to be increased Republican turn-out in districts like TX-22 (Lampson) R+15 and PA-10(Carney) R+8 (and Pennsylvania will be getting so much money dumped into their state from the NRCC, the RNC, and the presidential candidate, so let's not pretend that turnout won't be a LOT higher in these districts which reside in swing states). Plus five of the districts in Lean Republican territory have a PVI of R+5 or greater and of these three of them might just have a different person running (AK-AL [Young], OH-02 [Schmidt], CA-04 [Doolittle]). That's two Democratic seats which we could easily lose and 3 Republican seats which could move back to the Republicans. We got net +30 seats last time, in part, because no Democratic seats went to the Republicans, I can see at least three seats where the Republicans could take out our incumbents (GA-08, TX-22, and PA-10), but I can see us taking a bunch of seats off of the GOP (OH-01, NM-01, NM-02 [in a good year and if Wilson is the Rep nominee for the senate seat], OH-15, OH-16, NV-01, MN-03, IL-11, and CT-04) this would leave the Dems with +12 (assuming everything else stays the same). I think we can do better, but the most I'd be willing to predict is 10-20 in the House just because I don't believe we will keep all of our seats this time around.

As far as the senate is concerned, I can see three seats right now which we will pick up without any problem: Virginia (Open), New Hampshire (Sununu), and New Mexico (Open). I would also predict that we win Colorado (open) and Minnesota (Coleman). That gives us 5 seats, in a good year, we can probably also take Oregon (Smith) and Maine (Collins) (which gives us 7), have a 50-50 shot at Alaska (if Stevens is going to run for re-election), and possibly make a race of it in Mississippi and Nebraska (but make no mistake, they are battles which 70-30 are against us). This massive fundraising advantage which we have is helpful, but winning 10 seats would require us to sweep ALL of these seats and not lose Louisiana (which is still a distinct possibility). (with only second-tier candidates running in North Carolina and Kentucky, and the war-chests they have, we would probably have to dump $15 million just to match them both, which, even though we have a solid fundraising advantage, which with the money we'll probably need to dump into Maine, Oregon, Colorado, and possibly Minnesota, would be a REAL stretch). We can't get too far ahead of the game, I agree we need to compete everywhere, but competing everywhere is not the same as WINNING everywhere, and I think it is irresponsible to talk about winning ten seats, it sets expectations far too high. Eight is a distinct possibility, but it is probably the highest I'd be willing to go, based on what I see right now (and that's my optimistic assumption).

We have a lot more money and excitement than the Republican right now, but that means that we need to be more prudent about our chances not less. If we spread ourselves too thin and let the story be "Democrats predict filibuster-proof majority" and we only win 4-5 seats, we've just lost a HUGE battle and will pay for it in the next election cycle in fundraising and become so pessimistic that we will ONLY defend what what have instead of going on the offensive. Overconfidence can be our downfall, and we MUST keep that in mind.

Your go-to source for great sarcasm

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by: DGM @ Wed Dec 12, 2007 at 14:45:14 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Last $500,000

Last cycle that money went into Nancy Boyda's campaign.  And it worked.  Another $500,000, if available, could have gone into Dan Maffei or Larry Kissell and probably won those.  OTOH, even though House Republicans (unlike Senate Republicans) did a good job in 2006 of moving resources around, an extra $500,000 could have saved Jim Leach or Jeb Bradley.  They took polls and decided to pass on these districts, investing on "closer" races elsewhere and hoping to slide by.

The last $500,000 can make a clear difference.

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by: David Kowalski @ Wed Dec 12, 2007 at 04:53:44 AM CST