Excellent Post by Lexingtonian on Dem Prospects for 2006

[Laura PourMeADrink]

This was buried and I thought it was worth reposting...

Here's the list best as I see it.

Jeffords (I-VT) retires and Sanders (D) wins the seat easily.

Santorum (PA) will be defeated by Casey along pure party/ideological lines in the state.

Chaffee (RI)...his fate is swinging in the wind, there's no gratitude or political point to what he does. The swing RI voters, who still support him for being 'reasonable', are not hard support. He's supposedly running again but that's IMHO behavior mostly driven by spite for both Parties. I think he's really tired and beaten up and it's all just indignity now, that's the fundamental reality, and my impression is he'll officially admit to retiring sometime early next year- and a slumping in polling will push it. There is no electable Republican replacement candidate.

Snowe (ME) has supposedly been in poor health, some kind of problems with osteoporosis and such things, for a few years. And her essential political raison d'etre revolves around the Bath naval shipyard, which she probably saved this year but whose status as a political object is diminishing rapidly. There is no electable Republican replacement candidate.

Spector (PA) is giving his Senate role all he can, but he has gone to Ed Rendell recently to bargain about who his appointed replacement would be if/when he resigns. I think that day comes when he feels his efforts to hamstring Republican insanity are no longer as necessary, due to breakdown of Republican energy and ability, or he physically can't achieve it. I say mid or late 2006 is when things get that far.

DeWine (OH), Talent (MO), Burns (MT), Kyl (AZ), and Ensign (NV) are all wrong for their states at this point; the issue for Democrats is mostly getting adequate candidates to run- voters want the kind that doesn't shirk leadership or mince words and doesn't live in the past. We're going have to do some serious work in MD and MN to keep those seats Democratic too, though I'm counting on Republicans weakening enough (despite manic bursts of energy) to not be able to pull off winning them. The Maryland Democratic Party is too much a machine party that it isn't going to take some serious damage from Rove/Ehrlich. Likewise in New Jersey.

My impression of the 2006 election is one simple, strong, last, intensification of the famous/infamous Red/Blue map...Red fading and Blue intensifying and overcoming Red's 2002/04 peaking pretty cleanly. Some kind of 'moderate' or Southern-focussed strategy is utterly wrong- Democratic majorities in office and coherent in their initiatives will come from clearing Republicans out of seats in Blue States. And there should/will be a true Democratic majority at all levels. I don't see full coherence of the Party prior to the '06 elections but it will result from taking over power. Wrecking the remnants of the hardline Right components of the present Republican coalition will be the first job- killing the political power of the 'Christian' Right, e.g. I think that will back Democrats into the principled positions, i.e. in favor of serious enforcement of a coherent 14th Amendment doctrine and semi-protectionism/technology-centered economic growth, that they've lacked. And an 'evolutionary' approach to Iraq's governance problem.

[Gold Metal Flake]

1. Sanders is (I), not (D).

Have you visited the Swing State Project?

http://www.swingstateproject.com/

Great info on what's in play.

[Gloria]

2. kick

[UrbScotty]

3. As they say, from your (or Lexingtonian's) lips to God's ears. (nt)