It's been a while since my last House diary, and I just know you've been sitting there wondering "when will Nathaniel publish his next House roundup diary? I can't live without my fix, and he's just so...incisive...and brilliant...and downright Lincolnesque." (h/t to Stephen Colbert for that.)

Well, pine no more! As always, seats are ranked by flippability, but since House races are so numerous (at 435), I eventually switch to alphabetical order after the first 18 races. I figured 18 was a convenient number...and I also got lazy after writing about Alaska At Large.

Read below the fold, if you dare...

Just when the GOP is starting to catch some small breaks in the Senate, the situation in the House is rapidly deteriorating. As many had predicted, a growing number of Republican representatives do not find the prospect of life in the minority appealing and are calling it quits. Unfortunately for Republicans, a large majority of them represent competitive districts. The latest retirement were particularly shocking because they were completely unexpected -- especially Rep. Ferguson's in NJ-07. Democrats have golden opportunities to pick-up all of these seats, especially if the environment continues to favor them. But this also means Republicans will be forced to play defense and will not be able to contest that many Democratic-held seats, no matter how vulnerable they might be.

The full ratings are available here, at Campaign Diaries.

The full rankings are available on Campaign Diaries.

Plenty of action in House races since our first ratings came out in mid-September. This is recruitment and retirement season in the House, and Ohio has been the center of it all, with three Republicans retiring, two of them in very competitive districts (OH-15 and OH-16). Democrats have had better news on the recruitment front as well (look at AK-AL, FL-24, IL-11 and MN-06), but Republicans reply that they are very satisfied with their newest candidates in NM-01 and OH-07...

The beginning of the month brought the Senate rankings. Two weeks have passed, so it is time to look at the picture in the House. As bad as this week was for the GOP on the Senate (and make no mistake about it, between Hagel's retirement and Warner and Shaheen jumping in the race, this was as bad as it can get), House Republicans did their best to beat that. After a month of recruitment failures and retirement announcements, Republicans are not at their best in House races, and while some of them were hoping that they could reconquer the House in November 2008, that looks increasingly unlikely.

Read full ranking at Campaign Diaries.

As if it wasn't hard enough, in 2006, to have to fight against the Lazy Media's stenographic efforts in promoting the neo-conservative talking points, progressive candidates also had to fight against the strong will of Rahm Emanuel.  The Democrats won in November 2006, in spite of, not because of the efforts of Mr. Emanuel.  His blueprint for "success" in the 2006 Congressional elections was to find DLC-friendly, "Republican-ish" candidates to field, giving us the present day dilemma of the Bush-Dog Democrats helping to seize defeat from the jaws of victory on the National Stage.  

Many of the candidates that Emanuel helped elect have joined with a group of self-styled conservative Blue Dog Democrats and have cast key votes with Republicans and stymied Democratic efforts to end the occupation of Iraq and the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program.

In an article just published at Truthout four races from this time period show a pattern of deviousness which was Mr. Emanuel's Modus Operandi.

As with my challenger rundown, I am listing the races alphabetically and not by turnover chance. The reason is that some races are shaping up, with announced candidates, and others are still big question marks.

Any races without at least one announced challenger are ignored for now.

Let us begin. Turn to page Below the Fold in your hymnals...

Cross-Posted at my blog, An Enduring Democratic Majority.

Last November the Sunshine State gave the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives two new members: Tim Mahoney in FL-16 and Ron Klein in FL-22. A third seat, FL-13, was illegally wrenched out of Democratic hands when Vern Buchanan "Defeated" Christine Jennings by 369 votes, with a reported 18,000 ballots being recorded blank by touch-screen voting.

We all saw with horror as yet another Florida election was mired in uncertainty and missing votes. A whopping 18,000 votes for Congress in the FL-13 Congressional race disappeared, mostly from Democratic districts. This is an almost unprecedented undervote that raises red flags that SOMETHING went seriously wrong with that election. This is further evidence that touchscreen voting machines are just too unreliable. And many elections experts agree that the results of the election were affected by this undervote and, had those votes been properly recorded, the Democratic candidate, Christine Jennings, would have won.

But...it looks like the Florida election board had full warning there was a problem and were even offered a patch but IGNORED IT. Then they tried covering it up. Christine Jennings isn't giving up and she needs our help.

Yes, it's very early, but hey, we live in the age of perpetual campaigning, so let's jump on it.

I am ranking my list of House 2008 Defense (the top 25 at least): vulnerable freshmen, or vulnerable long-time incumbents. Since we only know for sure so far of one open seat (CO-02), I am not including open seats.

Read below the fold!

They aren’t even sworn in yet, and the handicappers are ready to write their political obituaries.  So goes life in Washington, I suppose.  And, truth be told, here on Daily Kos, too. Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post  on his The Fix blog:

Yes, we know it's way early to be talking about House races -- heck the winners in last month's midterms haven't even been sworn into the 110th Congress yet. But politics never stops. Like it or not, incumbents are already preparing campaigns for 2008 and challengers are getting geared up.

(cross-posted at my new local progressive blog Space Coast Rising)

The 2006 elections yielded mixed results for Florida Democrats. Great gains were made, but they fell behind many expectations. We reelected Bill Nelson (D) to the United States Senate, but we fell short of electing a Democratic governor. We have a new Democratic Chief Financial Officer, but the majority of statewide offices are still held by Republicans. We made gains in the state legislature, but we are still outnumbered in both chambers. The biggest gain came from the U.S. House seats. Only four districts in the whole Southeast region flipped--two of them were in Florida. Another one is currently contested, and might end up in a recount.

Below I will examine our gains and losses while making suggestions for future strategies.

Since I am from Florida, I'm going to write about what I know. Which a lot of people will tell you isn't very much. Nonetheless, here goes, below the fold...

But if you'd like to really humiliate her, and help win the FL-Gov, FL-13, FL-09, FL-16, FL-22 and other races in Florida, follow me below the fold...

Voters deciding on a replacement for disgraced Rep. Mark Foley may be provided with a list of candidates in the race as they enter the voting booth next month, an appeals court ruled Friday.

Foley's name will appear on the Nov. 7 ballot because his resignation came too late to make changes after revelations that the Florida Republican sent lurid electronic messages to male teenage congressional pages. A replacement GOP candidate, Joe Negron, is running in Foley's place.

Link

A Republican congressman says Democrats on Capitol Hill want George W. Bush out of office so badly that they put politics ahead of national security.