Informed Speculation

At the excellent WILLisms.com, a pundit roundtable will be posted tomorrow, and I’ve been invited (thanks, Ken!) to participate. The questions before the court are:

On a scale of 1-100 (1 being unlikely, 100 being likely), what are the odds the Republicans lose the House and/or Senate in 2006? Why? What, over the next year, could potentially change that prediction?

Are there going to be any particularly hot races next year? Any especially critical contests?

I’d like to handle the first part of that question (though I’d love to hear any feedback from you guys on hot races or critical contests) for now.

If the election were held today, I would put the odds of losing the House at 75-25 and the Senate at 60-40. For the first time in recent memory (in fact, for the first time since…1994), voter disenchantment has reached the point where even local incumbents are feeling the heat:

Talk about negative feelings, but according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, this is the first time since 1994 that a majority of Americans — as a generation [sic] proposition — want to dump their individual Member of Congress. Question: In the 2006 election for U.S. Congress, do you feel that your representative deserves to be reelected, or do you think it is time to give a new person a chance? Answer: Re-elect My Incumbent – 37%,. Elect a New Person – 51%.

That’s a very significant poll result, because usually voters say throw the bums out – but keep my bum, he’s doing a good job.

Unlike many of my fellow Republicans, I take no comfort from polls that show that, if anything, Democrats are held in even lower esteem than (or just as low as) Republicans. We’re marginally less unpopular than our opponents is not a very stirring campaign theme.

However, I put the real odds of the Republicans losing the House at 50-50, and the Senate, at 40-60. There are several things that will close the gap somewhat between now and the elections. One is another election, the one taking place in a month in Iraq. Once more, the world will see the spectacle of Iraqis voting freely in an exercise in true democracy, this time with the highest Sunni turnout yet. It will become increasingly hard for Democrats to shove the ‘Iraq is a disaster’ meme down the throats of the voters when the country is so clearly moving forward, despite the best efforts of the terrorists. Also by this time next year, Saddam’s trial will have begun in earnest, reminded the world of what a butcher he was and how much better off we are with him deposed.

The leadership within the party (as opposed to the often disastrous leadership provided by Congressional Republicans) also gives me cause for optimism. The RNC is in the capable hands of the great Ken Mehlman, and is steadily outperforming its Democratic counterpart in fundraising (and kudos to Mehlman for bringing Patrick Ruffini back on board and reaching out to the blogging community).

The final reason that I remain cautiously optimistic is that the Democrats have yet, 5 years into the Bush presidency, to define a rational policy in opposition to Bush. Most Democrats are more than happy to pile on Bush during this season of woe, but they hardly (the responsible ones, anyway) dare to call for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq, since they know full well the stakes. The economy remains strong, despite the oil shock and Katrina, and the anti-war movement as personified by kooks like Cindy Sheehan has no mainstream attraction.

Further, the current push to investigate the ‘lies and manipulated intelligence’ that led us to war can’t possibly have any long-term traction, since the plain fact is that the entire world believed the intelligence, not just the Bush administration. All of these factors lead me to believe that 2006 will be a better year than 2005 for Republicans…that, and the fact that it could hardly be any worse…