Even if we win the Senate on November 7th, it's lost to us. 51 Democratic seats in the United States Senate, even 52 seats, will get about as much legislation enacted into law as having zero United States Senators. So why are we wasting our money on the Senate? Let's pull out of the Senate races and focus on the House.
Now, don't get me wrong, there are few people who are as excited as me to have Senator Jon Tester and Senator Sherrod Brown and Senator Ned Lamont and Senator Jim Webb and Senator Claire McCaskill. But let's look at January 2007. A Democratic House of Representatives holds a slim 10-seat majority. It passes a minimum wage increase, the 9/11 commission recommendations, and reverses the raid on student aid. And maybe even, the slightly-majority-controlled Democratic Senate passes these reforms too. Maybe President Bush actually signs them into law.
But then look at Democratic attempts to pass universal health care. The Democratic House fails to pass any legislation because conservative DLC Democrats who are bought off by the insurance industry prevent any meaningful health care reform to pass. The Republicans in the Senate filibuster the legislation, if all Democrats support it (and don't bet on Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson to help us on that front). And even if by some magical force a health care bill comes out of Congress, President Bush will suddenly discover his power to veto legislation and he'll like it.
So what am I saying? I'm saying that spending $100 million on trying to win control of the United States Senate is a lost cause and a huge waste of money. Think about it? $100 million spent on the top 100 Democratic pickup opportunities means $1 million for each competitive race. In some districts, like NJ-07, WA-05, ID-01, WY-AL, and NY-03, a million dollars is the key to victory and could mean the difference between a 20-seat pickup for Democrats and a 50-seat pickup for Democrats.
Nick Lampson (TX-22), Tim Mahoney (FL-16), and Zach Space (OH-18) are great people, and will make great Congressman. But they are renting their districts. The huge Republican tilts of those districts, in a year where the word "Republican" is not treated like the plague and there are not scandalous resignations and ballot difficulties, those seats will revert back to the Republicans. And many other seats with Republican tilts will return to the GOP once they get a credible candidate in 2008.
So what can we expect in 2008 if we pick up 20-25 seats in the House this year? We can expect to lose it, or at least have to spend enormous resources that should be dedicated to the Presidential campaign to House races in order to regain control.
We need to create a durable and sustainable majority in the House, so that we can keep control for over a decade. And the only way to do that is by picking up 40-50 House seats this year, so that a 10-20 seat loss in 2008 (which would be very good for the GOP) cannot dislodge our control.
Furthermore, Republicans are destined to lose at least a half a dozen Senate seats in 2008 because they have 21 seats to defend and Democrats only have 12, a gaping 9-seat difference that is reinforced by the fact that Republican retirements that year will outnumber Democratic open seats, and we will have a bunch of popular Democratic governors reelected this year to combat unpopular Republican Senators in 2008. Even pessimistically, Democrats could gain a net 6 seats in the Senate, which, when coupled with a three to four seat gain this year, means a Democratic Senate of 54-55 seats in 2009. If we find credible challengers in almost every Republican seat in 08, we could pick up as many as a dozen seats, giving Democrats a filibuster-proof majority.
So why spend millions and millions of dollars on Senate races where seven million dollars are needed at the least to make the race competitive. Wouldn't that seven million spent on Harold Ford Jr. be better spent on the the seven races in New York (NY-03, NY-19, NY-20, NY-24, NY-25, NY-26, and NY-29) where that $1 million dollars each could easily dislodge already vulnerable GOP incumbents. After all, those seven Democrats are far more likely to vote with us on major issues than Harold Ford, Jr., a conservative Democrat in a very red state. Plus, they're all more likely to get reelected in a blue state like New York than a red state like Tennessee, where Ford will face a very tough reelection in six years.
There's a temptation for political junkies to think about the Senate first. After all, the fact that Senators represent states and the polling is so much more frequent makes it a lot easier to follow those races. But our money is not unlimited this year. We need to focus our resources where it counts, which is in the 60-100 Republican House seats which, with a cash-infusion could be flipped. There's a reason we in the netroots worked so hard this year to fill 425 districts with Democratic candidates. It was because in a year with a national wave, Democrats could pick up House races no one thought were competitive six months ago. But now that we have candidates there, and we have the money, let's give it to them so they can win big in November and give Speaker Pelosi a comfortable majority. Let's not waste all this money in the last two weeks on Senate races we might end up losing anyway.