How many more Democrats?

by: Mimikatz

Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 22:41


We all want more Democrats in the Congress, but how many more is realistic?  Senator Chuck Schumer has suggested as many as 8 Senate seats (Dems are ahead in 5 already: VA, NH, NM, CO and AK).  The Cook Political Report has been quoted as predicting 5-10 House seats and 3-6 Senate seats. I'll say right now that I think 20 House seats is realistic. How?

First, as the SF Chronicle noted on Monday, 29 House GOPers have announced their retirement, and only 6 Dems plus Tom Lantos' vacant seat (CA-12).  So the GOP has many more open seats to try to defend, so many that in their straitened financial circumstances, they can't expect to do much offense.  

This creates a historic opportunity for the Dems.  Normally, after a "wave" election such as 2006, when 33 House seats changed party, the winners lose at least a few seats in the next election.  The Dems won 8 seats back in 1996, following the stunning 1994 election, when the GOP took a net 54 seats and control of the House from the Dems.

But this year is different.  The big Dem retirements occurred in 1994, and were a big reason why the GOP took the House that year.  In 2006, there were only the normal few retirements; the big GOP defections are occurring this year, as the GOPers consider another 2-4 years in the minority.  

Secondly, 1996 was the midpoint of Clinton's first term, while in 2008 the public is clearly fed up with George Bush and the GOP, and may well sweep a Dem into the White House with the help of a swell of new voters, or new Dem voters.  And then there is the money issue.  The NRCC is dealing with an apparent embezzlement scandal on top of the loss of power, recruitment is down and their candidates just can't get any traction.

So the GOP is weaker than normal, and the Dems position is stronger, portending a possible second wave election.  Here's how the races look as of today.

Mimikatz :: How many more Democrats?
Special elections--3  Since my last post, Dems have won in OH-14 and held IN-07, and look to be ahead in the 5/3 special election in LA-06. There's even speculation that Travis Childers could be ahead in the 4/22 special in MS-01.  A victory in even one of these two red, Southern districts would scare the GOP; both might prompt even more GOP retirements.

Open seats--13  Things still look good in IL-11, NJ-03 and 07, NY-25, and OH-15 and 16.  

Prospects remain good in the following seats that have contested primaries:  AZ-01, FL-15, MN-03, MO-6, NM-01, NY-26 and VA-11.  Things are looking up in AL-02 and MD-01

Top targets--13  Darcy Burner in WA-08 is our top challenger.  Other vulnerable seats are AK-AL (primary) and NC-08 (Larry Kissell is our guy).  I'd add IL-10 (Dan Seals) to this list, along with CT-04, FL-13, MI-07, NV-03, NY-26, OH-01, PA-15, WI-01 and WV-02.

There are 16 long-shots mentioned in my prior post.  Of these, AK-AL is now rated a toss-up, and I"m adding VA-05.  And in VA-10 Judy Feder did well in her 1Q fundraising.  VA is bluing!

So that's 30 plus races where Dems are very competitive.  Of course we have some vulnerable Dem incumbents, but not nearly as many as the GOP hoped for, and some like Nancy Boyda in KS-02 are looking strong.  

The presidential race is going to be over for all intents and purposes in 2-4 weeks.  I agree with Charlie Cook that it is over when the donors decide to pull the plug and Hillary's campaign has to face the mounting unpaid bills.  Then we can truly turn our attention to getting more (and better) Dems into the Congress.

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How many more Democrats? | 17 comments
Looks good. (0.00 / 0)
Considering the epic mismanagement and severe lack of cash at the NRCC, this is even better than it looks. Outside of a handful of freshman seats and maybe the Georgia districts, I think the Dems can afford to play hard offense this season. Even taking a minority of these seats would send the "Demajority" in the House to formidable levels. Add the wave brewing in the Senate, and we may be looking at the realignment year that we all hoped for in '06.
Realignments Take Two House Elections (0.00 / 0)
We may not get the levels that are sometimes acheived, simply because the GOP gerrymandering is at historically unprecedented levels--that, and the intensely pro-GOP media.  But it's an historical fact that political realignments have traditionally involved two consecutive wave elections in the House.  That's what makes them happen.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
Realignment (0.00 / 0)
FWIW, I have not studied realignments to the extent you have Paul, but my belief is that the key to a realignment is the level of success achieved by the ascending party when it takes over the government.  For example, the Republicans winning the civil war, which also created the beginnings of the great indistrial giants that would serve as the GOP's financial backbone, cemented a realignment that lead to Republican dominance from 1860 to 1932.  IMO, the Democratic realignment came not in 1932, but in 1934 and 1936 when the public ratified the New Deal.  On the other hand, the Republican's policy failures: the Reagan recession of 1981-82, the attempted Clinton impeachment in 1998, the Iraq War and the general inability of supply side and free trade based economics to increase the living standards of the middle class kept the potentially realigning elections of 1980, 1994 and 2002 from having any long term political effect.  
[ Parent ]
Yes, In Principle, But... (0.00 / 0)
It's certainly true that the success of a realignment is determined by governing.  But my take on the data--which, admittedly is somewhat non-standard, though it supports a fairly standard argument--is that one side is simply repudiated as not really speaking to the issues that have emerged and moved to the fore, and so the winning party, electorally, cannot lose back, simply by doing a mediocre job.  They have to screw up royally--which usually takes some time.

For example, what happened in 1858/1860 did not last until 1930/32.  There was another religning election, in 1896.  What happened was that the GOP was losing its grip.  But the Panic of 1893 hit while the Democrats were in charge. President Cleveland was the most conservtive president the Democrats would elect at least until Clinton, and that pushed the majority of Dems leftward toward embracing the Poplists' message, under the leadership of William Jennings Bryant.  And it was this response that Rove's hero, Mark Hannah, was able to spin as a parochial, backwards-looking "politics of the past."

However, what happened after that was a profound case of internal differences splintering the winning coalition, though it took some time for this to become utterly uncontainable, which finally happened with the Roosevelt's Bull Moose candidacy in 1912, which redudced the GOP to Third Party status for that cycle.  That finally DID allow the Democrats to get back in power, but it was far more difficult for Wilson and the Democrats to hold on than it had been for the GOP, in part because the GOP continued to define the terms of debate.

This is, broadly speaking, pretty much what happened with GOP in the elections you cite.  Even though they actually managed to get Bill Clinton to sing their song that "the era of big government is over," the reality was exactly opposite to that, it's just that GOP Keynsian economics and big government benefitted a much narrower slice of the population.  You are probably correct that if they could have come up with something else that worked, they COULD have acheived a realignment.  But the fact is, they never even tried.  David Stockman admitted as much.

The GOP managed to alter the rhetoric of poltics, but that rhetoric did not correspond to a genuine transformation of the fundamental issues.  First Reagan, then Gingrich actually ran on being--in spirit at least--the real legitimate heirs of FDR.  ("I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Party left me!")  It was a crock, of course. But hypocrisy is the respect that evil pays to virtue, or something like that.

In short, I'm saying that the reality of modern industrial society, and the relationship of the welfare state to the vastly-expanaded middle class, created objective conditions from 1932 onward, that conservatism was simply incapable of politically overthrowing.  That's why the best they could do was the dealignment of 1968.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
I honestly think (4.00 / 1)
we could pick up 50 House seats -- and really, that means I think even more is possible (50 is already a suitably ridiculous number as far as elections go).

If this were to happen, I think that'd mean we'd also win many more than 8 seats in the Senate (and, really, I hope and think we can win 15 Senate seats -- and toss Mary Landrieu AND Joe Lieberman overboard via different mechanisms, hopefully).

Senators like Cornyn, Chambliss, and Graham are deeply unpopular right now (hopefully somebody runs against the execrable and excruciating-to-listen-to Graham in SoCar) and can be beat, I strongly believe.

I tend to think we in the netroots should focus on the cheaper Senate races with smaller state populations -- Maine, New Hampshire (not that Jeanne Shaheen really needs the help, but Sununu is terrible), New Mexico, Idaho, Nebraska, Wyoming (2 for the price of one), Alaska, Kansas, Mississippi (2-fer again), Oklahoma, Oregon. That's 13/23 Senate seats up for grabs, and all of these states have 5 or fewer congressmen. All of those combined have a smaller population than Texas -- as much as I love Noriega and despise Cornyn, the money might better be spent trying to do some damage in these smaller states.

[BTW, Mimi, I'd also add VA-02 and MD-06 to your list of wildcards -- not on the map, yet, but worth watching. And I also think we'll see some shockers this cycle, races that come out of nowhere and flip -- maybe VA-04 or VA-07, or DE-AL, or a few of the races in NC.]  

I'm With You, Ron! (0.00 / 0)
What with being "Mr. Realignment" and all.  I don't know if we'll get to 50, but I definitely think it's possible, and even more.  This is particularly so if McSame melts down in the debates, which I think is entirely possible.  He has really been living in a bubble for a long, long time, and he hasn't had to face tough questioning.  Just look at what happened to him with that high school kid the other day!

So, what happens when 3-5 weeks out from the election, the GOP presidential facade simply crumbles into dust?  How do they turn out anyone?  A good 20-30 seats that looked safe no longer are.  They can try to salvage them by pulling out of another 20-30 seats that looked competitive but no longer are.  But that late in the game, that badly stretched... it's going to be very messy.

How certain am I of that sceanrio?  Not certain at all.  I say it's maybe a 30% probability.  But I think that chances of McCain underperforming the inflated media expectations to some degree is a good deal higher than that, and the possibility of some other GOP disasters--sharply worsening economy, things much worse in Iraq, etc.--is fairly high as well.  So some combination of these scenarios are likely to give us a significant boost.

This isn't something we can count on, of course.  We've got to work hard.  But it is a case of "fortune favors the brave."  We run hard, solid and unafraid, and things are very likely to break our way.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
I agree it is possible (0.00 / 0)
But if I said that now, what would I write for the remaining 7 months?

There are 2 parts to a wave election. First, there are the fairly predictable seats that change party--most of the top targets (although several of our top targets DIDN'T win in '06, such as CT-04, NM-01, PA-06 (the first two may fall this time), some second tier.  Then there are seats where the GOP is caught napping. Dems won in some seats that got onto the radar only late--KS-02, IA-02, PA-04 etc.  There will be more of the latter as candidates emerge, raise money and hone their messages.  

Finally, gerrymandering has its downside.  It doesn't create more R's; it just spreads them out into more R+3 or 4 districts.  As the number of registered or identified R's falls, these seats become vulnerable.  We saw that in NY and PA last year, and may see it in MI and elsewhere in the midwest especially this year.

So I do think that 30 is possible this year, though not yet likely.  And 10 Senate seats is possible, though I'd put the likely at 6-8 right now.

McCain really is the wold card, in every sense of the term.

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.

[ Parent ]
Good points all around (0.00 / 0)
Especially the one about having something to write about.

But I still think that 30+ is already likely, what with 18% of  GOP self-identifiers from 2004 no longer calling themnselves Republicans.


"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Aim High (0.00 / 0)
I agree with Ron and Paul that we should set our sights high. If ever there were an election when we might have a second wave, this is it. Republicans are very unpopular, even among Republican voters. McCain is planning to continue Bush's horribly failed and unpopular policies. It is likely that Iraq will worsen, the economy will worsen, and more Republican corruption and cronyism will be revealed. If there is another bad hurricane or another disaster (West Nile virus, flu pandemic, terrorist attack, etc.) and Bush responds as he usually does, then Republicans will be even less popular. I can see a scenario in which any Democrat who isn't obviously a flake or corrupt would get elected. I don't think it is unreasonable to think that Democrats might pick up 12 Senate seats and 50 House seats.

Of course, this is not inevitable. The high number of GOP-gerrymandered districts and the strong bias of the mainstream media towards Republicans guarantee that it will not be easy. But if Democrats continue to be highly motivated and if we work hard for the next 7 months, I think we might see a real realignment in Congress. We shouldn't be too "realistic" -- it makes us give up before we've even begun to fight. I agree with Ron that focusing the netroots on smaller states and more obscure races may swing some races that no one expected.

By the way, Mimi, I think you mean Democrats held IL-14, not OH-14. I'm still hoping Democrat Bill O'Neill will defeat incumbent Republican Steve LaTourette in OH-14.

[ Parent ]
Yes. Thanks. (0.00 / 0)


John McCain--He's not who you think he is.
[ Parent ]
Remember that Gerrymandering can have its fallout (0.00 / 0)
There are two tricks to Gerrymandering, compressing a high percentage of your opponents into a few districts, and spreading out your own voters into as many, "safe" districts as possible.

The Republicans are starting to see flaws in the second part of the strategy where dome of the safe seats were cut too narrow. Say they created a bunch of R+5 seats, and the political climate shifts 5 points to the Demcrats. Suddenly you're in deep doo doo.

[ Parent ]
Yep (0.00 / 0)
Given the sour mood Americans are in, Democrats might pick up dozens of these kinds of mildly Republican seats. Of course, if Democrats weren't packed in very large percentages in central cities, we'd win even more.
[ Parent ]
Senate Important... House? (0.00 / 0)
We certainly need more Senate Democrats. It is so critical to prevent Republican obstructionism.

In the House, I'd rather see better Democrats than more Dems. I don't want to see the Party forced into compromises for the sake of Party unity. And, I want the dividing line between the parties more coincident with the Liberal-Conservative split.

Conservative Democrats have been the primary bloc keeping us in Iraq. Business interests and Village Pundits can use (and have used) that conservative segment to triangulate and squeeze out progressive ideas.

Not a clear difference (4.00 / 1)
It's possible to get better Dems at the same time as we get more. The likes of Don Cayazoux and Travis Childers would not fall into this category, but candidates like Darcy Burner and Larry Kissell certainly would.

A big house majority, in addition to making veto overrides much easier, would allow us to take risks in primaries. No more supporting the conservative because they can definitely win - we can take a chance on the unconventional progressive who can change his or her district, rather than waiting for demographics to do that for us. As it is there's too much caution about primary challenges or pushing the most progressive candidate in open seat races - we should really be getting involved in the primaries in IN-07 and NY-21 in a big way - but with a majority of around 100 there's no reason not to push the boat out.

Forgotten Countries - a foreign policy-focused blog

[ Parent ]
CA-12 (4.00 / 1)
Jackie Speier won the seat TODAY. She's the new Congresswoman from California.
great analysis (0.00 / 0)
Great read.

It's very funny to read all the MSM articles talking about Dem wins, with references to picking up 5-10 seats in the House.

5-10 my shiny ass. We're looking at at least 20.

The Senate looks good as well -- I'd be surprised if we took less than 6 (with Obama as nominee.) The holy grail of 9 seems unlikely still. If I had to guess right now I'd go with 7, which would be quite a coup but very doable given the circumstances.

IL-14 (0.00 / 0)
     There's a typo in the main story. We picked up IL 14 in the special election, not OH 14.
How many more Democrats? | 17 comments
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