I infer from your explanations that we should be able to get about 15 of them back next time, assuming we have GOOD CANDIDATES.

I'm still not sure AZ-5 is lost.

Counting continues...and Hayworth is now down 5,000 votes (from 7,000).

still some hope

What's important to note eregarding TX-22 is that the Republican won the Special election for the remainder of Delay's seat.

We might also pick up some seats that were Dem, stayed Dem, but were close, e.g., the seats in IL and GA that were close.

Our ability to pick off seats relies largely on whether or not the Dems who ran as conservative Dems vote that way. At this point, it's hard to say who will be more of a Zell Miller-Ben Nelson democrat and who will be liberals wearing conservative/moderate masks. I think it will be harder for psuedo-conservatives to hide liberal voting records with the Dems no longer in the minority.

A 15 seat swing back would be great. That's the thing about elections like this where we do poorly and the other side doesn't lose anything. There is a likely shiftback the next election. Assuming of course we do decent recruiting and don't get our doors blown off at the top of the ticket. You may remember after our big victory in 1994, that some of the seats we won, but maybe should not have swung back the next election, as folks like Dan Frisa in New York, Steve Stockman in Texas, Martin Hoke in Ohio and Michael Flanagan got beat the next time out. I think somewhere Mr. Doom and Gloom Novak wrote that there were 10 Dems who won this year that he expects to go down in 2008, so the line in this analysis is pretty consistent. I'll be interested to read Ed's take on seats the Dems have no business holding, which I'm sure will also include the two Georgia seats we almost won and Melissa Bean in Illinois. If nothing else, it shows us that despite Tuesday's disappointment, there is opportunity in 2008 if we seize it.

Ken

What's not mentioned here is that we are likely to see a number of Republican House members choosing not to run for re-election in 2008 for the simple reason that it's no fun being in the minority and it's not as easy to deliver pork to your district. For the same reason, incumbent Democrats will be more likely to stay on and we all know the power of incumbency in these races. Congressional majorities have a self-perpetuating nature.

In addition, I don't think it's too far off the mark to predict that the 2008 Presidential contest will be another close contest (like the last two) likely pitting a centrist Democrat (Clinton) against a centrist Republican (McCain or Guiliani). So there will be no big coattails pulling either direction.

It is like a stock market correction, we needed to lose the fat and baggage.
2008 time to rebound lean and mean. If we target red districts with aggressive conservative candidates, we can beat a so-called conservative democrat. It will be hard for conservative democrats with Nancy as their leader.
We lost this election at our base, because of a lot of factors.
We can win them back, but we have to start early, and work it.

Before you get too hopeful about Utah, their lone Democrat is a Matheson. The Matheson name is like Bob Casey in Pennsylvania - it's gold. If a Matheson runs for something, the Matheson will win virtually every time - unless, like in 2004's governor's race, the Matheson goes up against a Huntsman.

Utah's 2CD is in Salt Lake County and it is the liberal, east bench side of Salt Lake County. It has been gerrymandered into a Democratic seat (I believe to throw a bone to the Democratic Party). No way is that seat going Republican as long as the voting districts around the University of Utah are included. It is interesting that even though the 2CD is solidly Democratic, Matheson still refused to identify himself as a Democrat. There were no Donkeys in his TV ads. After watching them one had always to ask "Now which political party do you belong to, Jim?"

I pretty much agree with Ed's analysis, with only a couple of points to add:

IOWA 1 & 2 ~ I wouldn't write these districts off. They were drawn to be more or less competitive, and should return to that status in the future. This was a Democratic year, and they swung that way.

IN-9 ~ I doubt Sodrel will take on Hill for a fourth time, or that he could win if he does. Hill had a perfectly defensible voting record while he was in before, and probably will built another one.

IN-8/NC-11 ~ These seats will be tough to retake UNLESS the new Democrats vote with Pelosi too often. They will be freshmen Reps. with a lot of pressure in the big city, but they campaigned as conservatives in conservative districts. They can either keep their constituents happy and hold onto their seats for awhile, or make Nancy happy and put them at risk immediately.

I'm not so sure we can take back PA-8, no matter who runs. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to field the strongest possible candidate, though. 2008 could be our best chance to take it back for a long time - once incumbents get a couple of terms behind them, they become nearly invincible, and it takes either the taint of scandal or a "wave" election in the other direction to unseat them.

I don't know; a lot of this reminds me of the way the Democrats just HAD to take back the House in 1996 after losing it in 1994. Power of incumbency means a lot. GOP won 52 seats in '94 and the Dems took back how many in two years? Less than 10, right? Incumbents generally win elections. It takes a wave to wash them out. We can get the Dems down into the 220s, but it'll take awhile to take the House back.

BTW, it would help tremendously if the GOP went fiscally conservative again. NH, for example, has no reason to vote for a socially conservative, fiscally liberal party. My guess is that NH voted Dem because at least the Dems agree with them on social issues, while the GOP now agrees with them on nothing. If the GOP becomes fiscally conservative again, they can compete for these northern states.

The other thing that really hurt the GOP in NH is the war in Iraq. In general there aren't too many pro war people in the state, and Hodes at least made almost his whole case on the war and also made some promises I bet he won't be able to keep.

I don't know that the GOP can take these seats back in '08, but they may be able to. The one problem with Bass at least was that he wasn't socially conservative, but he also wasn't all that fiscally conservative either. A good candidate in either district could win the seat, but I think a lot depends on what the congress does over the next 2 years and where these new congressmembers are at.

I also sensed complacency in the Bass campaign. He had won handily in his previous elections, pulling in 60-70% of the votes. I think they thought they still were in good shape until it was too late to do much. Bass didn't even run too many commercials until the weeks right before the election. I am not sure how complacent the Bradley campaign was, but Bass was pretty anemic, but anemia born of over confidence I think.

But there was a massive GOP backlash in the state-the GOP took over the state house for the first time in almost 100 years-and the war was a point of contention even there (which made me laugh given that a state legislator really doesn't have much influence on US foreign policy).

The GOP absolutely needs to get its act together, but I don't think it is hopeless, and I think the 1st district may be easier picking than the 2nd for '08.

Oh, and the other thing coming up in '08 is Sununu's senate seat. Hopefully the backlash will be over, or a good candidate be able to beat him-although Sununu I think would be a harder pick off than either congressional seat.

Graf did surprisingly well in AZ-8 considering that the state and national Republican parties pulled all support after the primary. This also worked to discourage direct donations to his campaign.

The result was he lost by 12 %.

With the support committed before the primary this was a winnable race.

CT 2. Simmons may run again. As the recount has closed now to a mere 66 vote deficit he may well be the incumbent again and certaintly would run again