The Dems' Secret Plan to Hold Congress

Newsweek

Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much these days. But lately it seems that they’ve been willing to set aside their vast, irreconcilable differences and publicly concur on at least one thing: that the Democrats are going to do really, really badly in November’s midterm elections.

In April, for example, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, told National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” that the 2010 “playing field” is wider than “anything we’ve seen around here during my 20 years,” with “at least 100 seats” up for grabs. “There isn’t a seat in America that Republicans can’t win,” Boehner boasted. (No word yet on whether he beat his chest with his fists King Kong-style while doing it.)

The Democrats, meanwhile, have made it their duty to match the GOP’s grandiosity with an equal measure of glumness. Reached separately this week in Washington, officials from the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee repeated the same robotic talking points. Historically, the president almost always loses seats in the first midterm elections after he enters office, they said. Add in the sagging economy and the anti-incumbent sentiment out there, and it’s going to be an extremely tough year for Democrats.

(The press, for what it’s worth, agrees as well. Charlie Cook, Washington’s wizard of electoral predictions, puts 62 Democratic House seats and nine Democratic Senate seats in the Lean or Tossup columns—that is, just enough to flip control of both chambers of Congress to the Republicans, provided everything breaks their way.)

(More here.)