Walking through my living room, just now, which is replaying an earlier airing of the Larry King Show, I noticed Time magazine’s Jay Carney being asked whether or not there might be an Obama landslide in the offing. Carney’s response was telling. He said that he hadn’t seen a Democratic landslide in his lifetime and that there is an argument to be made that America is still a centist or center-right country. Carney then acknowledged that, based on a look at the polling data, an Obama landslide has to be considered as a real possibility.
Carney’s observations are basically unassailable. Everything he said is factually true. But he’s not being asked to tell us what his life up-til-now has taught him. He’s being asked to predict the future. And that is precisely where today’s punditocracy (and the larger half of the blogosphere) is failing you. There are now 91 competitive Republican-held congressional seats. I’ll detail them tomorrow. But, if you read Stu Rotherberg or Charlie Cook or Chris Cillizza, you’d be under the impression that we’ll be lucky to win 30 new House seats. Forget it. If McCain doesn’t stop the momentum, we’ll win the majority of those 91 seats, plus 8-12 senate seats, plus the presidency in a landslide.
The past means almost nothing, except what it can tell us about the obstacles to be overcome. We won special elections in heavily Republican seats this year in an environment that was almost infinitely more favorable to Republicans than our current atmosphere.
I am always optimistic, but I base my projections on my perception of reality in November, and not on current polling data. The Republicans are on track for total decimation. I’ll let you know if I see anything that might change that between now and election day, but people are already voting.
I had the best projection on the 2006 midterms, pegging the exact number of Democratic pickups to within one seat. And the reason I got it right was because I projected the Dems to win any race that was remotely close. This year that same principle will hold true…with a vengeance.
