Certainly at this stage, you should completely understand strategy: Now that the House is becoming more "iffy," the Senate will come back into "play."

But here is the reality, not the strategy:

1. At the end of the day, we WILL NOT LOSE either of Tennessee or Missouri.

2. We probably will hold Rhode Island -- why should we not? Chaffee is more liberal than Whitehouse and he and his family are esteemed in RI. Just look how the independents came to his rescue in the primary. In addition, I understand that certain democrats were persuaded to switch party identification to "unaffiliated" just for the primary's sake (and later switch batch).

3. We may lose Montana and Pennslvania. Need to see if Santorium has run out of steam.

4. We probably are losing Ohio.

5. We are DEFINITELY GAINING NEW JERSEY -- I do not care how many switcharoes transpire. New Jersey voters (and I know this personally) are sick of rising property taxes and that's the end of that.

6. We may gain Maryland, because this has become a very, very, very racial race. No matter what Kfume tries to say (and I give him credit for party loyalty), many black voters are sitting this one out. In the end Cardin will probably pull it out, but Steele certainly has a shot.

So at the end of the day, Senate will stay with Republicans -- final number of losses being either 2 or 3 (with a very extremely slight potential of 1 or even).

Save this e-mail and recirculate it after November 7th.

It's late in the game??? What in the world are you talking about? The real deal doesn't start until after labor day and that was just 2 weeks ago.

The big month is October when the GOP will be spending their money on ads in these competitive races. Plus we still have debates in these races coming up. The GOP has smartly waited until now to make their major push and it will be sucessful in keeping the Senate and House in Republican control.

I really don't understand this pessismism from conservatives. The internal polls show a swing towards the Republicans. And parties don't pay big bucks to the pollsters just to get the results they want to hear.

And as far as thise issue between Bush and Mccain et. al., this will be resolved before the Congress adjourns for the elections and when it comes up for a vote and the Dem's start hollering like a stuck pig, it will focus the attention back on them.

It could be a factor of President Bush was allowed to speak for himself in the speeches running up to 9/11/'s fifth anniversary-unfiltered by the media. The press has been working 24/7 to undo that. You should have seen the CNN coverage on that day and there afterwards-Jack and Paula couldn't let an oppurtunity to be snide slide.

But-I do agree with you-Warner, McCain, and Graham-these-
Nuns of the Navy are Annoying.

They can't miss a chance at self-aggrandizement.

If you have contacts in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, Montana, and Tennessee and, may I suggest, Michigan and Washington state, copy and email this to them: http://freedomkeys.com/demsondefense.htm

It's interesting that DeWine is a McCain ally and McCain will be the reason he goes down

I think it`s more likely that the gop loses the senate. Pa, Mt, Oh,Ri are pretty much going to change parties, MO. can go either way and i think the dems have a pretty good chance in Tn and Va.
The house is harder to call although all the experts are saying the dems should win.
Bush isn`t going to get much more popular in 6 weeks and his gop may be better off with the dems in charge for a couple of years. The country may just decide they are better off with republicans warts and all.

As far as Maryland goes Michael Steele has a better chance than one might think. When Mfume challenged Cardin he unknowingly hurt the Democrat Machine in Maryland. You see the African Americans in Baltimore voted in large numbers for Mfume, and they are very race conscious. In light of this I believe that a good portion of those who voted for Mfume will vote for Steele in the general election.

I gotta agree with AKM. The Senate looks to be in dire shape. I do agree with the commenter who argued that we WILL win NJ this time. I still remember Chris Matthews discussing how Jerseyites vote for WASPs whenever the corruption factor gets unreasonably high in the state. You don't get more Jersey-WASPy than the Kean brand name, and you don't get more corrupt than the NJ Democrats.

So we gain one seat, which gives us 56, and lose up to 6: MT, RI, PA, TN, MO, and OH. Thankfully, it looks as if Allen is rebounding a bit, so our floor appears to be 50 Republican seats, with 48 Dems, one socialist, and one Lieberman.

Query: do the Dems call for a power-sharing arrangement despite not actually having 50 senators?

Query: does Lieberman decide to caucus with the GOP in exchange for a nice cushy committee chair?

Query: Does POTUS bring Lieberman into the Administration so that Jodi Rell can appt a Republican to his seat?

Good news is that the HOUSE appears to be moving back into the safe column. All the projections I saw a couple of weeks ago centered around a 15-seat loss; now everyone's talking 10. The irony is that we'll come into 2007 with nearly the same number of seats in both houses that we came into 2001 with. In other words, all the gains of 2002 and 2004 will be gone.

Way to go, DC GOP establishment!