You dispute the notion that this year is shaping up to be a bad one for the incumbent, no matter the party? In PA-12, I think Mark Critz ran as far to the right as a conservative Republican would have. He said he was against health care reform known as Obamacare, was pro-life, pro-gun and is against cap-and-trade legislation. He declined help from President Obama and worked hard to ensure the president wasn’t mentioned in his campaign advertising. He ran against “the system,” in other words, in a district with a 60,000+ Democrat-to-Republican registered voter edge.
Rand Paul is begging President Obama to come to Kentucky, by the way, to campaign for Conway. He’s even offering to pay for his airline ticket if he does. At this point, he’s up 25 points on Conway though, of course, that race is going to tighten considerably. I’d say, at present, the Republicans will pick up 20 to 30 seats in the House and a half-dozen in the Senate if current trends stay the same. What do you think is going to happen in November?
I’m saying that if ther GOP continues to run tea party wingnuts in swing districts they will not take back the House in November. House races are still local affairs and the Democratic Party is a big enough tent that they can run candidates of many different persuasions to match the district. THe GOP has been consumed by extreme right wing thinking and a moderate republican cannot win a primary race against a teabagger, and a teabagger cannot win in moderate swing districts when faced with a center right Democrat like Critz.
Obama will campaign where it makes sense for him to campaign, which means you’ll see a lot of Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton in places like Kentucky.
Rand Paul is backing away from many of the lunatic fringe positions he took to win the primary, like talk of a return to the gold standard, or isolationism, 9/11 conspriacies and sounding like a much more mainstream Republican. Classic run to the right to win the primary and to the center to win the general. The problem with that in swing districts is that the GOP candidates have to run too far to the right and that will come back to haunt them in the general with moderate and independent voters.
Sure the Dems will lose some House seats, it always happens to the party in power in midterms, especially if the country is mired in a deep recession, but they won’t lose nearly as many as the talking heads are projecting.
Here in Indiana, all the big name incumbents made it through the primaries…some R, some D. Other than the guy who just resigned due to a sex scandal, I don’t expect any of those seats to change hands. The districts are gerrymandered so much it’s nearly impossible to oust the incumbent.
We’ll have an open Senate seat due to Bayh not running. The Republicans put up a tired old ex-senator lobbyist who doesn’t even live here and wasn’t even sure he wanted to run. In recent years he lobbied for TARP and for cap and trade. Not exactly appealing to the Republicans. The Dems are running a pro-gun, pro-life candidate. This will be a VERY interesting race.
Did Brad Ellsworth vote for Obamacare?
It appears that Ellsworth is behind in every poll, why the confidence?
What confidence are you referring to?
What confidence are you referring to?
Peter, I re-read your post. Sorry. It will be an interesting race.
the Indiana Senate race is an anomaly. You won’t see many moderate Republicans like Coats win open primaries against tea party candidates. The main reason he was able to is that the tea party couldn’t agree on a consensus candidate to run and split the wingnut vote and Coats snuk in. I’m looking for a little more wingnut solidarity before the big primaries in June so lots of them win.
Coats will win Indiana.
Hey, I’m confident it will be interesting, how’s that? 
Could be trouble for him, at present. Especially if it looks like it’s going to cost Hoosiers more money.