If you look at all the races going on, you can't help but get to magic # 15 pretty easily...
Now ofcourse, we could capture bin Laden or something extreme, but realistically, even if we take a turn for the worse...the GBA goes below 7 points, Bushs approval hits 45+...anything...it would take a minor miracle for us NOT to win the House...and thats not Hubris, just look at the races with me:
First place, start off with two great sources:
MyDD's House Forecast
http://www.mydd.com/...
Cook's House Forecast
http://www.cookpolitical.com/...
Now, Charlie Cook and his organization is not made of fools, last year he had zero D or R seats leaning the opposite way, so he's cautious about doing that.
He has four Republican held seats leaning Democrat:
CO-07
AZ-08
FL-16
TX-22
We are going to win those seats, unless there is a disaster
So now we have to win 11 more, so let us assume a worse case scenario:
-We are going to win at least 2/3 Indiana tossups
-We are going to win atleast 2 out of PA's 6th,7th,8th,10th with Rendell huge coat tails
-We are either going to win at least Ney's old seat or Chabot's seat in Ohio with Strickland's huge coat tails
-The Lieberman/Lamont turnout will snag us at least one of the 3 vunerable CT seats
-One of the NY Seats (like 5 up for grabs, but 2 tossups)
-One of the old confederate seats (VA8 or NC11)
-Illinois Seat or Open Iowa seat
-One of the Kentucky or other Florida seats
-One of the MI/WI/WA races
That's the magic 15...and that's pretty much worse case scenario, and the GOP really only has a chance at Chet Edwards or one of the Georgia seat's...the rest they either took out all their ad buys or are way down in the polls and money
So I'd throw in New Mexico's 1st to counter a possible 1 GOP pickup, and we still win the house
Keep in mind, I am being EXTREMELY NEGATIVE and still coming out with a scenario that we take the House
Really, it's just ours to lose, its ours to grossly screw up
The best analogy I can think of is an NCAA college basketball team playing their conference championship, they are up 30pts at half time, they can either screw up and barely win the game, but get an automatic tournament win bid, or crush the team and get a higher spot in the tournament
For those who don't watch NCAA basketball, ignore the last paragraph...
But honestly though, we can't lose this unless there's a disaster