Senate Dems hold hope for a majority

McClatchy Newspapers

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Democrats, growing more confident of winning back the White House, are starting to whisper about another dream.

Sixty Senate votes — a filibuster-proof majority.

“The wind is more strongly at our back than ever before,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters last week. “The message of economic change is just succeeding everywhere.”

Why such optimism?

The McCain-Palin ticket appears to have little pull for struggling Republican candidates. Anger at the Bush White House is at record levels. And the math gives Democrats a decided advantage — they’re defending just 12 Senate seats, while Republicans are trying to hold on to 23 (two states, Wyoming and Mississippi, hold two senate elections this year.)

“The outlook in Senate races continues to deteriorate for Republicans,” wrote influential political analyst Stuart Rothenberg in Roll Call last week. “I now can’t rule out 60 [Democratic] seats for this November.”

Democrats currently hold 51 Senate votes (Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, elected as independents, vote with the Democrats.) To win a filibuster-proof majority, they must hold all 12 Democratic incumbent seats up for election this year, then add nine more.

The first task appears easier. Only Democrats Mary Landrieu in Louisiana and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey appear in any trouble at all, and recent polls suggest they’ve opened bigger leads against Republican opponents. The other 10 Democratic incumbents are considered safe.

Democrats also appear certain to pick up two seats — one in Virginia, the other in New Mexico — now held by retiring Republicans.

That leaves seven seats needed to reach the 60-vote threshold.

Nine seats are considered available to both parties with Election Day less than three weeks away. In those races, recent polls show, Democrats lead, are tied, or are within the margin of error in seven contests.

Win them all, and they’ll hit that 60-vote magic number.

“Obama will probably have to win by 6 [percent] to 8 percent, and some unlikely Republicans will have to lose,” said Burdett Loomis, political science professor at the University of Kansas. “Still, in 2006, everything broke the Democrats’ way in the end. ... Stranger things have happened.”

For incumbent Senate Republicans, the squeeze is on.

Eight face serious challenges: Ted Stevens in Alaska (now on trial for corruption charges); Gordon Smith in Oregon; John Sununu in New Hampshire; Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina; Saxby Chambliss in Georgia; Mitch McConnell in Kentucky; Norm Coleman in Minnesota; and Roger Wicker in Mississippi.

Of those, Sununu — who trails former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen — appears in the worst shape. But Dole, Stevens, Smith and Coleman have also trailed in recent polls.

In 2006, Democrats picked up six seats.

Republicans have not lost all hope. They point out that several seats in play are in states where the GOP is historically strong — Kentucky, Georgia, Mississippi — and where McCain is expected to do well.

And the power of incumbency remains strong. In Kentucky, for example, McConnell argues his position as GOP minority leader benefits his state.