Alas, GOP seems set to take hit in Senate
By Jonathan V. Last
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jewishworldreview.com | You know your party is in trouble when one of its senators is caught allegedly pulling a George Michael in an airport restroom, he's forced to (sort of) resign, then says he didn't mean it, and that's only the second-worst news of the week.
The bigger problem Republicans faced was the news that Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia would not seek reelection. The 2008 election is a long way off, and events are always unpredictable. But in a close presidential election, Democrats could make large gains in the Senate this cycle. And if the Democratic presidential nominee breaks open the race, forces are in motion for a genuine realignment.
As things stand now, Democrats have a 51-49 edge in the Senate. (There are only 49 Democrats, but independents Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders vote with the Dems.) In November 2008, 34 Senate seats will be up for election; 22 of those are Republican seats, and only 12 are held by Democrats. The math is brutal enough, but when you look more closely at the races, the news gets even worse for Republicans.
Take Virginia: The reason Warner's retirement was such bad news for Republicans is that this once-Red State is getting bluer every year. Virginians tossed out George Allen - who was considered, by conservatives, presidential material once upon a time - for newly minted Democrat Jim Webb in 2006. The state's current governor, Democrat Tim Kaine, succeeded another successful Democrat, Mark Warner.
The only hope for Republicans is that at the presidential level, George W. Bush received 52 percent of the Virginia vote in 2000 and 54 percent in 2004. Waiting in the wings to try to hold the Senate seat for Republicans are former Gov. Jim Gilmore, who just dropped out of the presidential race - What? You forgot he was ever in it? - and Eric Cantor, a fourth-term representative from Richmond's Seventh District.
(From a Republican strategist's view, Sen. Warner's retirement is all the more tragic because it means that his wavering on Iraq and attempts to distance himself from Bush and the war ultimately served no practical political purpose.)
Republican Sen. Wayne Allard's retirement leaves a seat open in Colorado, another state that has been trending Democratic. Democrats won four of the state's seven congressional districts in 2006 as well as the governorship.
Those are the only two open seats, but going around the horn, some Republican incumbents seem vulnerable. In Minnesota, Norm Coleman is up for reelection in a state that is increasingly Democratic. Coleman has been a solid senator, but in a liberal state, during a wave election, he certainly isn't safe.
New Hampshire was a heavily Republican state as recently as 2000, but that's changing, and Sen. John Sununu's seat may be in play. Al Gore lost New Hampshire, but John Kerry won the Granite State in 2004; in 2006, Democratic challengers unseated both of the Republican incumbent representatives while the Democratic governor rolled to reelection by nearly 50 points.
In North Carolina, Sen. Elizabeth Dole's numbers are less than inspiring: Two recent polls put her approval rating in the 48 percent to 52 percent range. Also, she began 2007 with only $245,000 in her campaign war chest. The Hotline's Chuck Todd and Quinn McCord, two of the sharpest election watchers in Washington, note that while Republicans have good presidential chances in North Carolina, Democrats are poised to take most of the other statewide races.
Alaska probably isn't in play, but Sen. Ted Stevens is embroiled in all sorts of nonpolitical trouble: FBI and IRS agents raided his house in July as part of a corruption case. The investigation is still on, not a good backdrop for a campaign.
Arrayed against these vulnerable Republicans, only one Democratic senator, Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, looks weak. So many Democratic voters fled the state after Katrina that the political deck in the bayou is now stacked in favor of Republicans. Things are so bad for Louisiana Democrats that the popular Democratic state treasurer, John Kennedy, just switched parties and may wind up as Landrieu's challenger.
What will the final math look like? If the Democrats sweep to a broad presidential victory, they could wind up with something like 58 seats (with some combination of Oregon, New Mexico and Maine also coming into play). But even in a close presidential race, they might gain three or four seats.
For Republicans, that electoral reality is ominous enough to make them yearn for a simple anonymous, gay, bathroom sex scandal. |
