Terry's Elections Guide and Predictions: Introduction
Welcome to my midterms election guide. I want to state a few general principles I have about this election, and then I'll list my predictions for all the competitive races I can see, with commentary as warranted.
I am optimistic every year, but this year I'm optimistic because of the size of the playing field. Regardless of how things turn out on Tuesday, I think this election will be remembered for being the year Democrats decided to play all across the country. The Republicans do this on the presidential level (in Bush's first quarter as a reelection candidate, they raised money from every county in the country) and they'll catch up eventually on the congressional front. For now, Democrats are contesting seats in districts without serious challenges in years. A lot of these candidates aren't going to win, but I think a lot of them will, and out of the group that falls short, many of them will come back to become top-tier challenges in 2008. So I think a four-year strategy puts Democrats in solid control of the House.
I feel the same way about the Senate. My official prediction for NYU's Midterm Madness has a 50-50 split, but 2008 has a ton of ripe GOP-held targets: Oregon, New Hampshire, Colorado, North Carolina, Virginia (potentially open), and New Mexico (potentially open), off the top of my head, are all going to be Democratic targets, and there may be more I'm forgetting. (OK, I went to Wikipedia, and I forgot Minnesota, which is easily a top target, and we also may be able to contest Tennessee, Georgia or South Carolina if we're feeling frisky. Kentucky too if Mitch McConnell turns to stone over the next couple of years.) Now, 2008 may well have some serious challenges to Democratic-held Senate seats too, but I'm optimistic that we can take back the Senate soon enough.
Finally, a lot of the seats Democrats are targeting are in blood-red Republican territory. Over at MyDD, Chris Bowers said, "Uber-red districts are fun to attack, but over the long-term we can't count on them." I think that's a short-term philosophy. He said it in reference to Texas' 22nd district, which will probably go for Democrat Nick Lampson, since he's running against a write-in candidate for Tom DeLay's old seat. Bowers is right that Lampson will probably only have the seat for one term, but that's not really the point. The point is that we're going to spend the next 20 years going after Republican-held districts literally all over the country, working on the ground and running strong Democratic candidates so that we slowly but surely turn these districts Democratic. It'll be hard to keep any Democrat in TX-22 for long in the current political climate, but if we keep pushing hard there, a long-term Democratic congressional seat may become viable. Again, it's not necessarily likely, but if we keep at it in all the rock-ribbed Republican districts, we'll win some of them.
I'll update this post when I'm done to count up my totals for everything. Until then, we're going race by race.
UPDATE: I counted them all up, and I believe Democrats will pick up nine governorships, 37 seats in the House, and 6 seats in the Senate. If this is true I will explode with joy.