Republicans Lose House, Senate

Absent some dramatic turnaround in the numbers in Virginia or Montana, which I don't expect, the Republicans will lose the Senate. They have already lost the House; the only question is by how many seats. The Senate results are precisely as I predicted Sunday, although I had revised my prediction in the CNN bloggers pool to reflect late indicators that ...

2006 Election Live Blogging

I've finally managed to get set up at the CNN election party on a borrowed laptop (long story). Lots of televisions and other bloggers, although the cacophony of sound from the latter is drowning out the audio from the former. No closed captioning as of yet for the suddenly hearing impaired. I'll be posting updates as events warrant. ...

Wild Predictions for 2006

The Conventional Wisdom has the Democrats picking up somewhere between 20 and 30 seats in the House and between 4 and 7 in the Senate, enough to win the former and to make the latter a nail biter. Still, there a professional pundits and pollsters willing to go out on a limb making predictions well outside those ranges. John Harris notes ...

2006 Midterm Election Predictions

Charlie Cook notes the incredible volatility in the polls in a lot of Senate contests, with several races still too close to call: In Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum is gone. While the margin in Ohio is not nearly as wide, it's very hard to see how Mike DeWine makes it back either. The strange ones are Conrad Burns and Lincoln Chafee in Montana ...

A Pre-Mortem on Republican Losses in 2006 Midterms

Charles Krauthammer has an excellent analysis of what to make of the losses the Republicans are expected to suffer five days from now. Substantial, yes. Historic, no. Before proclaiming a landslide, one has to ask Henny Youngman's question: "Compared to what?" (His answer to: "How's your wife?") Since the end of World War II, the average loss for a second-term presidency ...

Saddam Nuke Docs Taken Off Web Citing Copycat Danger

There was much hoopla overnight, created by a Drudge hyping of a NYT "November surprise" on Iraq's WMD that, frankly, strikes me as a non-story. Here's the gist: Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional ...

Real Polls and the 2006 Election

Karl Rove told NPR's Robert Siegel Tuesday that Republicans will retain both Houses of Congress two weeks hence. When Siegel said this was extraordinarily optimistic, Rove retorted, "I'm allowed to see the polls on the individual races. And after all, this does come down to individual contests between individual candidates." The ensuing discussion tangentially focused on an important ...

Santorum: Eye of Mordor Protecting Us From Terrorists

Rick Santorum told a suburban Philadelphia newspaper that the Lord of the Rings provides valuable insights for the Iraq War. In an interview with the editorial board of the Bucks County Courier Times, embattled Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has equated the war in Iraq with J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings." According to the paper, Santorum said that the United States ...

Earth to Santorum

Rick Santorum appears to be engaging in a bit of economic/historical revisionism. You probably remember well when Bill Clinton and the Democrats passed the largest single tax increase in our nation's history in 1993, $293 billion. That sent our nation into an economic slump. Uhhh...what? As David Adesnik suggested, maybe Santorum is confusing 1993 with 1893. From March 1991 to February ...

Democrats Have Shot at Winning Senate

While still a longshot, some stumbles by favored Republicans and surprisingly strong showings by some underdogs are making Democrats optimistic about their chances of winning back the Senate. Six weeks before Election Day, the Democrats suddenly face a map with unexpected opportunities in their battle for control of the Senate. In Virginia, a state that few expected to be seriously competitive, Senator ...