The News of the Impending Dem Bloodbath may be premature

You can look at it from a lot of angles, but it's fair to say that generally speaking the picture for this November is ugly. According to Election Projection Democrats are likely to lose control of the House by 1 Seat :

House Results
Democrats 217 -39
Republicans 218 +39

And in the Senate by 2 Seats

Seenate Results:
Democrats 48 -9
Republicans 50 +9

Although this would be a horrible thing for the Democrats, it appears that it's actually a much more fragile prospect than much of the Punditocracy would like us to believe.

Now Election Projection is simply looking at the most recent set of polls without the benefit of analysis or context, but I think it's shocking to really consider the possibility that we could lose both Houses. That means Speaker John Boehner with Darryl Issa running his own Inquisition with Subpoena power, and Paul Ryan and his Reverse-Robin Hood Plan running the budget committee, not to mention Majority Leader Mitch McConnell with Senators Rand Paul and Sharon Angle?

I mean seriously.

So what does it take to avoid this fate? Looking at this worst case scenario who are the seats and races that we have the strongest chance of preserving and ensuring that Republicans have to take to gain control of either the House or Senate?

The Senate according to Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com (which has an excellent track record and is now sponsored by the New York Times) there are just 9 seats currently listed as "Tossup".

FiveThirtyEight Gives us 46 Safe Democratic Seats, 4 Leaning Democratic and these 9 - (Current most likely Winners in Bold)

State	Democrat	Republican	Ind/Other	Chance of Win
Colorado	Michael Bennet	Ken Buck		77% Rep
Florida	Kendrick Meek	Marco Rubio	Charlie Christ	52% Rep
Illinois	Alex Giannoulias	Mark Steven Kirk		53% Dem
Missouri	Robin Carnahan	Roy Blunt		91% Rep
New Hampshire	Paul Hodes	5 Candidates		77% Rep
Nevada	Harry Reid	Sharon Angle		59% Rep
Ohio	Lee Fisher	Rob Portman		82% Rep
Pennsylvania	Joe Sestak	Pat Toomey		88% Rep
Wisconsin	Russ Feingold	3 Candidates		69% Dem

So the more sophisticated projection shows us probably keeping the Senate as long as we keep at least one of the above, even if we do lose Harry Reid (but don't count him out yet!). All we need to do is KEEP THOSE TWO SEATS ON THE BUBBLE. I mean, I won't be satisfied by that considering the filibuster abuse we've been going through already, but even looking at it this far out it doesn't yet seem like a total bloodbath.

FiveThirtyEight doesn't yet have a similar analysis in place for the House, so using the less sophisticated ElectionProjection we basically have this when we look at the threatened Democratic Incumbents and Seats.

Seat	Democrat	Republican	Rep Lead
Arizona-1	Ann Kirkpatric-Inc	Paul Gosar	+0.3
Arkansas-1	Chad Causey	Rick Crawford	+7
Arkansas-2	Joyce Elliot	Tim Griffin	+13.8
Colorado-4	Betsy Markey-Inc	Corey Gardner	+4
Florida-2	Alan Boyd-Inc	Steve Southerland	+1.3
Florida-8	Alan Grayson-Inc	Dan Webster	+3.6
Florida-24	Susan Kosmas-Inc	Sandy Adams	+1.8
Illinois-11	Deborah Halvorson-Inc	Adam Kinizinger	+8
Illinois-14	Bill Foster-Inc	Randy Hultgren	+2.6
Indiana-8	Trent VanHaaften-Inc	Larry Bucshon	+3.8
Indiana-9	Baron Hill-Inc	Todd Young	+1.3
Iowa-3	Leonard Boswell-Inc	Brad Zaun	+3.5
Kansas-3	Stephene Moore	Ken Yoder	+5.3
Louisiana-3	Ravi Sangisetty-Inc	undetermined	+10.3
Maryland-1	Frank Kratovi-Inc	undetermined	+2.5
Michigan-1	Gary McDowell-Inc	Dan Benishek	+5.6
Michigan-7	Mark Shauer-Inc	Tim Walberg	+4.3
Mississippi-1	Travis Childers-Inc	Alan Nunnelee	+3.4
Nevada-3	Dina Titus-Inc	Joseph Heck	+1
New Hampshire-1	Carol Shea-Porter-Inc	undetermined	+2.8
New Hampshire-2	undetermined	undetermined	+2.8
New Mexico-2	Harry Teague-Inc	Steve Pearce	+2
New York-24	Michael Arcuri-Inc	undetermined	+1.8
New York-29	undetermined	undetermined	+10.3
North Dakota-AL	Earl Pomeroy-Inc	Rick Berg	+4.6
Ohio-1	Steve Driehaus-Inc	Steve Chabot	+3.3
Ohio-15	Mary Jo Kilroy-Inc	Steve Stivers	+3
Ohio-16	John Bocceri-Inc	Jim Renacci	+3.8
Penn-3	Kathy Dalkhemper-Inc	Mike Kelly	+1.3
Penn-7	Bryan Lentz	Patrick Meehan	+0.2
Pann-10	Chris Carney-Inc	Thomas Marino	+1.3
Penn-11	Paul Kanjorski-Inc	Louis Barletta	+7
S. Carolina-5	John Spratt-Inc	Mike Mulvaney	+1.3
S. Dakota-AL	S. Herseth-Sandlin-Inc	Kristi Noem	+3.1
Tennesee-6	Brett Carter	Diane Black	+10.3
Tennesee-8	Roy Herron	Stephen Fincher	+3.5
Texas-17	Chet Edwards-Inc	Bill Flores	+1.8
Virginia-2	Glenn Nye-Inc	Scott Rigell	+2.1
Virginia-5	Tom Periello-Inc	Robert Hurt	+8.5
Washington-3	Denny Heck-Inc	Jaime Herrero	+5.6
Wisconsin-7	undetermined	undetermined	+0.8

Although there are a lot of Democratic seats with a huge Republican lead in double digits, what's most notable about this is how many of these races (26) are at just 1% to 3% down - which is within the margin of error. A lot of these races could go either way, and in order to take congress, Republicans Have to RUN THE TABLE.

Beyond the safe Republican and Democratic seats, these Battleground Districts need to be vigorously defended.

We can't afford to lose Alan Grayson, but certainly can't let former Rove Lackey Tim (Vote Cager) Griffin become a member of Congress. Someone who while a member of the RNC violated a Federal Court Order to block the counting of absentee ballots submitted by African American Troops while they were serving in Iraq, then as a reward he was granted a spot as U.S. Attorney - replacing Attorneys like Robert Iglesias who wouldn't setup bogus prosecutions of ACORN and bypassing Senate Confirmation thanks to loopholes in the Patriot act - this Bushie leftover CAN NOT become a member the Controlling Majority in Congress. No way. No how!

We need to show who these people are...

Accurately.

Sharon Angle -"We might have to resort to Second Amendment Remedies", "The People have become Spoiled", "Phase out Social Security" yet she lives off her Husbands Federal Pension.

Rand Paul - "I would have a discussion about Public Accomodations and business right to discriminate", Holding BP accountable is "Un-American"

Joe Miller - "Dismantle Medicare"

Rubio - 'Repeal Health Care", "Make Bush Tax Cuts Permanent" but "Employee Benefit extension must be paid for"

Mitch McConnel - "I take Obama at his word that he's a Christian"

Joe Wilson - "You Lie"

Mike Pence - "I don't think Rush Limbaugh has a Racist Bone in his body"

Joe Barton - "I apologize to BP" for the White House "Shakedown"

Michele Bachmann - "Obama Stands with Achmedinejad", "We have to stop this Gangster Government", "I want people armed and dangers on cap and trade", "We need an investigation of Congress for their Anti-American views..."

John Boehner - "The Stimulus hasn't created a Single Job","We'll Defund Health Care"

To avoid this Democrats need to get out and Campaign Hard as the President did yesterday, they need to stand on their record - be willing to push back on all the GOP Talking points about "Government Takeover" and "Death Panels", note as was mentioned this weekend on Meet the Press that even though this recovery has been tough, it's still been one of strongest recoveries in history (after one of the largest crashes in history) - they need be willing to point to wavering Liberals and Progressives that the final Health Care Bill actually came out a little bit better with the Non-Profit Option than it would have been with the Public Option.

They need to FIGHT, and we need to help them.

We will probably lose some seats this November, but really there's no reason for us to lose All OF THEM - not if we ActBlue and move to protect our Democratic Majorities right now, and keep doing so right until November.

Vyan