Handicapping The 2010 Races

Fourteen months out from the 2010 races, and the cries of DOOOOOOM are already resounding from the mountaintops. Politico's Josh Kraushaar breathlessly details the dire predictions of the end of the Democrats.

Some of the most prominent and respected handicappers can now envision an election in which Democrats suffer double-digit losses in the House — not enough to provide the 40 seats necessary to return the GOP to power but enough to put them within striking distance.

Top political analyst Charlie Cook, in a special August 20 update to subscribers, wrote that “the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and congressional Democrats.”

"Many veteran congressional election watchers, including Democratic ones, report an eerie sense of déjà vu, with a consensus forming that the chances of Democratic losses going higher than 20 seats is just as good as the chances of Democratic losses going lower than 20 seats,” he wrote.

At the mid-August Netroots Nation convention, Nate Silver, a Democratic analyst whose uncannily accurate, stat-driven predictions have made his website FiveThirtyEight.com a must read among political junkies, predicted that Republicans will win between 20 and 50 seats next year. He further alarmed an audience of progressive activists by arguing that the GOP has between a 25 and 33 percent chance of winning back control of the House.

“A lot of Democratic freshmen and sophomores will be running in a much tougher environment than in 2006 and 2008 and some will adapt to it, but a lot of others will inevitably freak out and end up losing,” Silver told POLITICO. “Complacency is another factor: We have volunteers who worked really hard in 2006 and in 2008 for Obama but it’s less compelling [for them] to preserve the majority.”

Shocked isn't the word, more like resigned. Look, even I think the Dems are going to lose seats in 2010 and it's entirely possible they will lose 20 or 25. But losing full control of the House is going to be a long shot for the Republicans for the same reasons the Republicans lost ground in 2006 and 2008: America's voter demographics is changing and not in the Republicans' favor. I don't see 50...unless that is the Democrats can't pass a health care reform plan and the rest of Obama's domestic agenda dies.

If that happens, the Gates of Hell will swing wide. On the other hand, if a solid bill does pass, the Republicans in 2010 are going to run on a ticket of taking health care coverage away from tens of millions of Americans.

You tell me how successful that's going to be.