Forecasters: GOP Might As Well Give Up on Senate

Charlie Cook writes in the National Journal that "[i]n the House and Senate contests, the debate is about how many seats the Republicans will lose; they no longer have a realistic chance of holding their own."

The grim outlook includes what Cook now expects to be losses of Senate seats currently held by Republican stalwarts like John Warner in Virginia and Pete Domenici in New Mexico.

Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics agrees with Cook that Warner's seat and Domenici's seat are likely to be captured by the Democrats this year.

Cook says he's shifted Republican Sen. Gordon Smith's re-election bid in Oregon from "leans Republican" to "toss-up." He says Smith doesn't face "an especially formidable challenger," but "the political climate has effectively erased the natural advantages that Smith brings to the race."

Sabato still has Smith's race rated as "leans Republican," but it appears to have been more than a month since he made any adjustments to that race on his website.

Cook has five other races listed as "toss-ups," and they're all held by Republicans. Four incumbents are running — Norm Coleman in Minnesota, John Sununu in New Hampshire, Ted Stevens in Alaska and Roger Wicker, who was appointed to fill the seat that was vacated by Mississippi's Trent Lott and now runs in a special election to serve the rest of the term.

The fifth "toss-up" is the open seat left by the retirement of Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard.

Sabato says the Colorado seat and New Hampshire seat are likely to switch to the Democrats. He agrees that the Alaska seat and the Mississippi seat look like "toss-ups."

But Mississippi is only a toss-up because Wicker was appointed, not elected. Mississippi, though, has been voting Republican regularly for several decades, so my inclination is to make Wicker the favorite to retain his seat. I'm not convinced that a Democrat can win a statewide race there.

And I'll need to see more evidence before I am persuaded that Stevens is in trouble in Alaska.

Sabato also hasn't changed his opinion that Coleman is likely to hold his seat. Perhaps the announcement that former Gov. Jesse Ventura will not be running for the Senate has something to do with it — although Sabato says that "[Ventura's] votes almost certainly would have come at [Democrat Al] Franken’s expense."

Cook contends that Elizabeth Dole's campaign for re-election in North Carolina is "getting increasingly competitive," although I have yet to see evidence of that.

In fact, I think some of what Cook is being told these days is mostly wishful thinking on the part of Democrats who are letting their imaginations get the better of them.

"Democrats ... contend that they are making progress against GOP Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, and Pat Roberts of Kansas," writes Cook, "but those boasts are not particularly convincing at this stage."

As someone who lives in Texas, I can assure you that Cornyn is quite likely to win re-election with no trouble. Sabato agrees.

I also lived in Oklahoma for four years, and I find it hard to imagine that Inhofe can be beaten there. Again, Sabato agrees that the seat should remain "solid Republican."

But I think the indications are clear that Democrats will gain about five Senate seats in November — not quite enough to make their majority veto-proof (in case they're having to deal with a Republican administration) but enough to make them formidable, no matter who sits in the Oval Office.

Political observers have mentioned only one Democratic Senate seat that might be in danger — the one currently held by Louisiana's Mary Landrieu. "What is clear is that the state is trending Republican," Cook says of Louisiana, but he concedes that Landrieu, who was narrowly elected in 1996 and then narrowly re-elected in 2002, "has a much stronger record of accomplishments this time ... and she is running a better campaign than in the past."

Sabato seems to agree, although he says the race is "still far too close to call."