2006 Midterm Update

Although the Democrats are poised to win major victories in next month's congressional elections, the Newark Star Ledger's John Farmer offered this caveat. The Democrats still need to win fifteen seats to regain control of the House, and more than half of the most hotly contested districts are too close to call and could still go either way. Meanwhile, in the Senate, Democrats need six seats to gain control. Only eight are in serious contention (Democrat Edward Kennedy in Massachusetts and Republican Richard Lugar in Indiana will win their respective races with token, if any, opposition), and Democrats have to win six of them plus hold on in the unexpectedly close race in New Jersey. To stay in control, the Republicans need to win only three, because even then, with the Senate tied at fifty apiece (which is what happened when this same class of Senate seats were up for election in 2000), they'll still hold the Senate with Dick Cheney's vote.

The Republicans actually have an easier job of maintaining control of one or both houses of Congress than the Democrats have of winning it. All they have to do is win a bare majority of votes in an equally slim majority of races. With the evident blessing of Karl Rove, the architect of the fifty-percent-plus-one solution, the Republican party is trying to stoke fears again, noting that Osama bin Laden and his henchmen are still at large and they could become more dangerous if the Democrats gain control of Congress and make George W. Bush answerable to them. (Yeah, so if Bush is protecting us from bin Laden, why hasn't he still caught him yet??) And if this fear tactic doesn't work, all Republicans have to do is remind the voters that if the Democrats take over Congress. . . the Speaker of the House will be a woman, and key House committee chairmen will be black!

And Ted Kennedy will be feeling his oats in the Senate again. :-O