It's hard to be overly optimistic about this year's midterm elections, given how poorly the 2000 and 2004 general elections went for the Democratic Party. Further, given so many different stories about the insecurity of "black box" electronic voting machines, there's always a concern in the back of my mind that not every vote is being counted, that there just might be some uneven tallying aimed to keep the GOP in power. But aside from those feelings, just about every news service under the sun is saying that come Tuesday, the Democrats will take over the House of Representatives, and some are saying it is increasingly likely that the Senate will fall their way as well.First, you have Stuart Rothenberg, a top non-partisan, claiming on CNN that the Democrats will take both the House and the Senate, picking up 34-40 seats in the House, and 5-7 seats in the Senate.
Chris Bowers of MyDD, in his forecast, conservatively estimates the Democrats will gain 26 seats in the House of Representatives, adding detail in every race to back up his claims.
Electoral-Vote.com shows the Democrats ahead in key Senate races, but says some of the races are within the margin of error of 1-3 percent. As of today, he says it's a 49-49 tie, with 2 races too close to call. This number has varied anywhere from 48 to 50 Democratic seats over the last few months.
News wire services also see Democrats picking up governorships, leaving the only place where they haven't made a dent to be the White House. It looks like we'll still have to wait at least two years for that.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are going out of their way to implode in a race to the bottom. It turns out our "oh so intelligent" administration posted instructions on how to make an atomic bomb on their Web site, with detailed documents, now pulled down, but not before pundits said they would be very helpful to aggressive countries, including Iran. This, compounded with news that a key evangelical leader likes to gain pleasure through trysts with a gay hooker, just makes you wonder if the Democrats could win it all just by watching the entire Republican leadership team fall in a series of resignations and indictments.
As Daily Kos often writes, we're just "four days until daylight".