and Russ can run for his Senate seat. There might be buyer's remorse regarding Johnson by that time.

I agree with you that prolific Republican partisan polling is skewing the averages. I think Boxer, Murray, Coons, Blumenthal and Reid will win and Sestak is not out of it. Even Feingold could surprise if cell-phone-only voters in Milwaukee and Madison turn out. Disagree with you on Crist and Conway--they are out of it in my opinion.

I think we will lose the House, but not with a 60-70 seat loss many are talking about. The Democrats won the Congressional vote by about 7 percent in 2006, even though they had much larger leads in many of the generic ballot polls at the time. It's possible the Republican advantage in the Congressional voting will only be 2-3 percent, which means either holding the House or losing the House by a margin that could be made up in 2012 (depending on how redistricting goes).

between 40 and 50 seats. The outside groups are going to swamp what Democrats can spend, the DCCC's ads aren't good, Congress didn't handle issues well this fall, the economy sucks and I don't see any outside game-changing event happening.

In IA-01, long considered a safe seat, the 501(c)4 American Future Fund will spend about a million dollars against Bruce Braley. Braley "should" be ok in a D+5 district where he outperformed Obama in 2008, but who knows in this kind of environment with that kind of money spent against him?

doing a closed-door fundraiser for the Iowa GOP at the State Fair. They didn't want the press anywhere near him.

compared to polls from the state a month or two ago. I wonder if it's an outlier or if something happened to change the dynamic of the Senate and governor's race.

how deranged some of these people are.

to watch

Bush I was much more reality-based than today's GOP leaders. He also signed off on the Clean Air Act and supported a tax increase as part of a deficit-cutting program. I disliked him intensely but he did not wholly ignore real problems in the world.

Very true--thanks for pointing that out.

a lot of those were temporary census jobs.

I fear we are locked into a lost decade scenario now. Democrats seem to have no political will for further economic stimulus.

on the right are so weird. I recently learned that the Republican Party of Iowa adopted a plank in the platform calling for the "original" 13th amendment to be ratified. This was the Titles of Nobility Act of 1810--apparently there's a cottage industry on how it should be considered ratified.