Right Side of the Rainbow

Ed Rollins was on Fox News yesterday talking about the November elections. (If you don’t know Ed Rollins, he’s one of the Nation’s top Republican political strategists. His service dates back to at least the Reagan years.) Pace the conventional wisdom, Rollins seemed to suggest that the Democrats were more likely to win control of the Senate than of the House. But of the House, he said this: to net the fifteen seats they need to put them in the majority, the Democrats will have to take down some GOP incumbents in Republican-leaning districts. And if that happens, the damn will burst. If voters in fifteen districts are willing to throw out their GOP incumbent, then you can be sure voters elsewhere are also willing to throw out their GOP incumbent.

In other words, if this is a wave election in which the Democrats can knock off a net of fifteen Republicans, they will probably knock off another ten or fifteen as well. In a wave election, the wave doesn’t just stop at the exact number needed for control (c.f. 1994, when Democrats lost a breathtaking 56 seats).

If a wave is coming, it will manifest itself in these districts.

A note of helpful corruption: the Incumbent Protection Act kicks in this week. From here to election day, interest groups cannot make any mention whatsoever in their broadcasting advertising of a sitting member of Congress. Most Democrats supported this battering of the First Amendment; accordingly, if on the morning of November 8 they awake to find that they’ve fucked nobody but themselves, they’ll have nobody but themselves to blame.

Now for some specifics. Bookmark this post and watch the districts below on election night; these are the Democrats’ best pick-up opportunities. If a wave is coming, it will manifest itself in these districts. (Note: I’m not saying a wave would necessarily stop with these races; I’m saying it must start with them.) I’ve arranged the districts from eastern time zone to mountain, which is the direction in which any wave would move:

• Connecticut 2
• Connecticut 4
• Connecticut 5
• Pennsylvania 6
• Pennsylvania 7
• Pennsylvania 8
• Pennsylvania 10
• Virginia 2
• North Carolina 11
• Florida 22
• Ohio 1
• Ohio 15
• Ohio 18
• Indiana 2
• Indiana 8
• Indiana 9
• Kentucky 4
• Illinois 6
• Minnesota 6
• Iowa 1
• Texas 22
• Colorado 7
• New Mexico 1
• Arizona 8

For more, see the Rothenberg Political Report.

Technorati tags: 2006+elections, Democrats, Republicans, Congress, politics