You may not have noticed amid the clamor over Democrats' chances of reaching 60 seats in the Senate, but they're also set to make big gains in the house -- perhaps even equaling their 30 seat gain in 2006:
Independent political analysts like Stu Rothenberg and Charlie Cook have upped their predictions of Democratic gains in recent weeks -- with a 20-seat Democratic gain now seen as the floor for November.
Most strategists -- in both parties -- privately believe Democrats are positioned to pick up well more than 15 seats especially given the developments of the last few weeks. During that time, the bottom, which many GOP operatives believed had long ago been reached, dropped out further with seemingly safe incumbents like Reps. Dan Lungren (Calif.), Dana Rohrabacher(Calif.), Dean Heller (Nev.), Lee Terry (Neb.) and Peter Roskam (Ill.) now in real races.
If the likes of Lungren et al. wind up losing, Democrats could well score seat pickups of 35 or more in 19 days time -- a wave that would drop Republican into weak minority status at the start of 2009.
As Charlie Cook points out, the fact that Democrats are set for a second wave election in a row is fairly remarkable:
Devastating back-to-back election cycles are truly rare: They havehappened only twice in the past 80 years (40 elections) -- toRepublicans in 1932 and 1934 and to Democrats in 1950 and 1952.Usually, when voters kick the heck out of one party, their anger issatisfied and they move on. Voters rarely come back the very next timeand kick the same party hard again.
This election isn't over, but it is looking very bad for Republicans -- and seems to be getting worse.
--Sam Boyd
