For months, I have offered a bet: When the dust settles after the 2010 elections, the Democrats will have larger majorities in the House and Senate than the Republicans did after the 2002 election. For all their braggadocio, no right-winger has taken me up on that bet.
Now, it looks even better for the Democrats. The GOP has been hijacked by the extremists, the Sarah Palin "base" (though her endorsements didn't mean much). A few nutjobs will come through (such as in Utah).
But while the Republicans are shifting to the hard right, the Democrats are moving ever so slightly to the left, almost to the middle. The "anti-incumbant fever" is mainly right-wing outrage at people who were not insane enough for them. In last week's primaries, out of 84 races with incumbents running, the incumbents won 82 of them. One is now in a runoff. The other, the governor of Jim Gibbons of Nevada, lost after being mired in scandal. His Democratic opponent: Harry Reid's son.
While I still think the Dems will lose seats in the offyear, as the majority party usually does, the goppies are shooting themselves in the foot. A little bit of good economic news, Obama cracks the whip on BP and idiots like Rand Paul, and I'm almost willing to predict that the Dems either not lose very many seats or even manage to pick up a few.
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Now, it looks even better for the Democrats. The GOP has been hijacked by the extremists, the Sarah Palin "base" (though her endorsements didn't mean much). A few nutjobs will come through (such as in Utah).
But while the Republicans are shifting to the hard right, the Democrats are moving ever so slightly to the left, almost to the middle. The "anti-incumbant fever" is mainly right-wing outrage at people who were not insane enough for them. In last week's primaries, out of 84 races with incumbents running, the incumbents won 82 of them. One is now in a runoff. The other, the governor of Jim Gibbons of Nevada, lost after being mired in scandal. His Democratic opponent: Harry Reid's son.
While I still think the Dems will lose seats in the offyear, as the majority party usually does, the goppies are shooting themselves in the foot. A little bit of good economic news, Obama cracks the whip on BP and idiots like Rand Paul, and I'm almost willing to predict that the Dems either not lose very many seats or even manage to pick up a few.