Over the past few months everyone on this site and many other liberal sites are only talking about the Presidential race. This worries me deeply. A Democratic President is nice, but as you can see from the 1990's, it is nothing without a strongly Democratic Congress. If we don't pick up at least four seats in the Senate and 10 in the House, you can kiss any hope of progressive reforms under a Democratic President goodbye. This is what happened in 1992. Democrats spent all of their time trying to get Bill Clinton elected and did nothing to increase their majorities in Congress. This led to Republicans giving President-elect Clinton a big black eye in 1993 when his party lost 10 House seats and one Senate seat on the same day he was elected President. This is why we saw no universal health care in 1993.
I am fairly confident that we can pick up the four seats in the Senate. I think we will get VA, CO, NM, NH, and possibly MN, while losing LA. That would get us either three or four seats. We are going to need at least that amount if we are to bring momentum into 2009 to pass universal health care. The House is a different story. We have about 10 seats in the House that are very, very vulnerable to a Republican take over. Those seats are CA-11(McNerney), FL-16(Mahoney), GA-08(Marshall), AZ-08(Giffords), KS-02(Boyda), TX-22(Lampson), PA-04(Altmire), NH-01(Shea-Porter), IN-07(Open in March Special) and WI-08(Kagen). If we were to lose all of these guys and fail to pick up many seats to offset them, the new Democratic President is likely to have a big black eye much like Clinton did in 1993.
If we are to be pass a universal health care in 2009, we can only afford to lose 2-4 of these 10 seats and pick up 12-15 currently Republican held seats. Opportunities for pickups include open seats AZ-01, FL-15, IL-11, LA-06, NY-25, NJ-03, MN-03, NJ-07, NM-01, NM-02, OH-15, OH-16, and possibly VA-11 if Davis retires. If we picked up all of these seats, which is very unlikely, we would have a net gain of 9 to 11, which would almost be enough to pass universal health care. Since it is unlikely we would pick up all of those seats, we need to start looking at Republican incumbents. Best chances include CT-04(Shays), IL-10(Kirk), MI-07(Wahlberg), MI-09(Knollenberg), NC-08(Hayes), WA-08(Reichart), and FL-21(Diaz-Balart). We would have to pick off at least 4-5 incumbents, win most of the open Republican seats and hold our own losses to low single digits if we are to gain the 10-15 seats we need to pass lasting progressive reforms.
I really think the DNC and liberal blogs should pivit away from the Presidential race and focus on these crucial House races. If we don't pick up these seats, the new Democratic administration will be in huge trouble in 2009 much like Bill Clinton was in 1993. If Democrats win the White House in 2008, but lose seats in the House, it will be an awful night for the Democratic party.