The folks over at The Rothenberg Political Report are out with its latest House race ratings, and the numbers look awfully good for the Democrats.

Going through the list overall, 40 Republican-held districts are listed as being vulnerable at this point, as compared with just 23 for the Democrats. Even more problematic for the GOP than the overall numbers are those districts most likely to flip -- those ranked toss-up/tilt retention, tossup, tossup/tilt loss, and leans loss. Among this group, there are 19 Republican districts and just nine for the Democrats. Even within this group for the Democrats, I'd question some of the placements -- for instance, it's hard for me to see Oregon's fifth, which is being vacated by Democratic Rep. Darlene Hooley and which has a Cook PVI of D+1, as being a tossup at this juncture, particularly considering that the more likely GOP nominee, Kevin Mannix, has lost four statewide races since 1996 (two for Attorney General and two for Governor) and is generally widely unpopular while the more likely Democratic nominee, state Sen. Kurt Schrader, has a proven track record of winning elections in the district and has the ability to self-fund, to a degree; Kansas 2, where Democrat Nancy Boyda is running for a second term, features a very bitter and potentially divisive GOP primary, which should make it fairly difficult for the party to pick up the seat.

Perhaps even more importantly, Rothenberg rates four races in districts currently held by the GOP as tossup/tilts Democratic (1) or leans Democratic (3), and just one race in a district currently held by the Democrats as tossup/tilts Republican. Specifically, Rothenberg gives the Democrats a slight advantage to pick up the seat left open by Jim Saxon in New Jersey, and gives the Democrats a slightly greater advantage to pick up the seats left open by Jerry Weller in Illinois, Jim Walsh in New York and Tom Davis in Virginia. The only district in which Rothenberg sees the Republicans as having a better than even shot at picking up a seat is Texas 22nd district, where Nick Lampson is running for reelection.

I'm not going to run down the whole list of races -- you can read them over at Rothenberg's blog. But suffice it to say that Rothenberg is on to something: The Democrats have a much better shot at picking up seats and are less vulnerable to losing seats than are the Republicans, a reality that will make it darn near impossible for the GOP to retake its majority in the House in 2008.