I take anything a professional political operative says with a grain of salt. I presume that those who pay them get "the truth" and us po' folks who get the free opinions get what we pay for.

On the other hand, I would like to see some truth in advertising on cable TV. From now until election 2008 I would love to see a little info box appear underneath Chris Matthews, Bill Kristol etal that reads "Predicted XX result in 2006 Congressional Election".

nope, if the dems pick up only one seat in the House and one seat in the Senate.
It will be hailed as the second Coming of the Libyarul Wave!
The Liberal media bias is too strong to allow anything except a positive spin - no matter what.

Reality though seems to me, if the Dems can't pick up clear majorities in both houses of CONgress, they need to fold up their tent and start a different party. maybe a re-birth of the Whigs or something else. Because if they don't get the majorities they've been bragging about, the Dem party is dead.[and rightfuly so.]

He looks at one prediction which calls for 34 to 40 seats flipping (the high side of the democratic wave theorists). He then looks at the 57 individual races assessed and finds they don't add up to the same number. Assuming the races labeled as "pure toss up" are 50-50 (a reasonable assumption unless we want to get into Clintonian word definitions of 'toss up'), and that leans/likely etc to one party has a probability associated with it that is the same regardless of party (if not, then upgrade the lean to likely for the disfavored party).

Net result is 25 to 26 seats, not 34 to 40. In fact if you assume the democrats will win every tossup, leans democrat and likely democrat, you see a 36 seat change (plus four democrat seats held). There are another 21 seats that are tilted toward the republican (0 democratic seats identified as tilted towards the republican). The bottom line is that they are predicting between 60% and 70% of all the identified house races for republicans will go to the democrats and 100% of the democrat held seats will be held, though 37% of the seats are listed as tilting to some degree towards the republicans (their designation of the tilt). Looking at the toss-up, tilting towards the republicans with toss ups, 72% of the races are either a toss up or tilting towards the republicans, but they are predicting 100% hold on democrats and 60 to 70% of the seats going to democrats.

The numbers just don't add up.

So gather the predictions to help you sort the wheat from the chaff in 2008 pundits. But be prepared for a surprise if you are relying on any prediction that doesn't identify the seats to make up their numbers (identifying could be '3 out of 4 of these seats will go democratic').

Should the senate hold and the house barely slip to the Democrats, Bush and the republicans can claim a victory of sorts. Certainly that's how the media will play it.

Fear and smear will have won out yet again and one of the most incompetent administrations in American history will continue to do great damage to the country's prestige and ideals.