Democratic Congressman Kendrick Meek won the Senate primary in Florida last night. While he is clearly the better Democratic candidate, the downside is that means that he and Gov. Crist – who is running as an Independent – will now be fighting for the same votes, possibly giving Republican Marco Rubio a path to victory. Whomever wins this seat may decide who has control of the Senate next year. On the gubernatorial side, Republicans wisely chose Medicare fraudster Rick Scott who will face Democrat Alex Sink, the state’s chief financial officer.

Over in Arizona, incumbents Sen. John McCain and Gov. Jan Brewer won their primaries. McCain faced former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, who is even crazier than McCain these days, but strangely, lost. Republicans also nominated former Vice President Dan Quayle’s son, Ben Quayle, to an open congressional seat in Arizona. Probably because he said President Obama is the worst president ever, or something.

Lastly, in Alaska, the Tea Party looks to have claimed another victim in their ideological purity war. While we are still awaiting some absentee ballot results, Sen. Lisa Murkowski was likely defeated by some guy named Joe Miller (no really, he’s basically just some guy with no experience or accomplishments to his name). So some incumbents won and one lost. How will the media make an overly simplistic narrative out of this?

Oh.

Less than three months to go…

House – Charlie Cook still thinks the House is very much in play:

The Cook Political Report last week upped its projection from a 30-40-seat net gain for Republicans to a 32-42-seat net gain, with our model showing +34 seats for the GOP. This count is more heavily weighted toward individual race dynamics, but my gut feeling — which, in years like this one, factors in national mood, relative intensity and enthusiasm between the parties and how independents seem to be breaking — is suggesting somewhat bigger numbers.

The wave is still the wave, and it still looks pretty strong and unabated.

The polls aren’t looking good for Dems, though few believe conditions it will be like 1994 (maybe like 2006). Still, I agree with Cook that this will turn only one of two ways: either it will be an average midterm with average net losses for the president’s party or it’ll be a wave with people voting based on their anger and discontent with the state of the economy.

Senate – Tea party crazy Ken Buck won the GOP’s Senate primary in Colorado last night, meaning that Sen. Michael Bennet probably has a better chance of winning now, just like Sharron Angle’s disastrous candidacy in Nevada has brought Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid back from the dead. As for the rest of the most competetive races, Republicans continue to look really good to takeover 4 seats – North Dakota, Delaware, Arkansas and Indiana. Pennsylvania and Illinois remain 50-50, Gov. Crist continues to lead in his independent bid in Florida, and Lee Fisher is making Ohio the Democrats biggest takeover oppurtunity. See First Read’s ratings for a full list. Basically, the remaining months will determine whether the Democrats fend off a lot of the challenges or the Republicans put chamber control in play.

Gubernatorial – Republicans nominated a weak candidate for Colorado governor yesterday and former Rep. Tom Tancredo has announced an independent run, giving Democrats a good shot at retention. Connecticut looked like a lock for Democratic takeover with either Lamont or Malloy (who won). And over in Georgia, former Gov. Roy Barnes is putting the state in play as Republicans are in disarray over their candidates. The Line has the most recent roundup of the remaining races. There hasn’t been any recent polling here in Texas, but Bill White continues to run a solid campaign. Will it be enough to topple Perry? Only time can tell.

There’s just a little under 5 months until the general election, and while people ain’t happy with Democrats, they still aren’t ready to ride the GOP bandwagon just yet. Here’s the skinny:

House Races – The current makeup of the House of Representatives is 255 Democrats and 178 Republicans (two vacancies exist that won’t be filled until November, one in a solid Republican district in Indiana and one in a competitive district in New York). This means Republicans must have a net gain of 39 seats to a win a majority (most estimates put their expected gain at around 30 seats give-or-take at this moment in time). However, there are three seats that Democrats are actually favored to win back. The at-large seat in Delaware Rep. Mike Castle is leaving to run for Senate and the Louisana and Hawaii seats won by Reps. Joseph Cao and Charles Djou in solid Democratic districts under special circumstances are great pickup oppurtunities for Democrats in what will generally be a good night for Republican candidates. While it’s only three seats, every seat won is a seat that could deny Rep. John Boehner the Speaker’s gavel.

Senate Races – There’s been good news and bad news on the Senate front, but overall the picture is looking better. First, the bad news. Last night, Sen. Blanche Lincoln managed to narrowly fend off a primary challenge from Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. While the seat is endangered no matter what, Halter was the stronger general election candidate according to polls. Also, the entrance of Dino Rossi into the race against Democratic Sen.Patty Murray of Washington state has made that race much closer than it should have been.

Now for the good news. Rep. Joe Sestak is now leading in the polls against Republican Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania. Sen. Harry Reid has also improved considerably in the polls and the strongest Republican challenger Sue Lowden was defeated in last night’s Republican primary by Sharon Angle, the tea party favorite. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal seems to have weathered the storm of his “misstatement” about serving in Vietnam rather well, as Linda McMahon (yes, that Linda McMahon) is still well behind. Meanwhile, Rep. Mark Kirk, a Republican running for Senate in Illinois, is currently admist a similiar military service controversy, giving State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias a break (the race remains a tossup). Still, Republicans look to surely gain at least North Dakota, Indiana, Delaware, and probably Arkansas at this point.

So far I’ve just talked about Senate seats Democrats are defending, but there are a few pickup oppurtunities. Rand Paul’s insanity has made Kentucky an unexpectedly competitive race, with Attorney General Jack Conway trailing by just a few points. Democrat Lee Fisher and Republican Rob Portman’s race in Ohio is a pure tosssup. Democrats also have potential pickups in New Hampshire, Missouri, North Carolina, and potentially Arizona if J.D. Hayworth defeats Sen. John McCain in the Republican primary.

Overall, Republicans need 10 seats to gain a majority in the Senate and that doesn’t look at all likely at this point.

Gubernatorial Races – Here’s where things look pretty good for Republicans right now. Wyoming, Kansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Iowa are looking like pretty solid pickups and they are favored in Michigan and Pennsylvania. The Democrats’ most likely pickup is in Hawaii where the Republican governor is term-limited, but there’s good oppurtunities in Minnesota, Connecticut, Vermont, and California. I admit to following these races less than the Senate ones (except for the governor’s race in Texas, of course, where our friends at BOR have put together an average of polls showing Bill White typically 7 points down from Gov. Rick Perry, currently), but they are important. Whichever party controls the most governorships and state legislatures (let me also take this oppurtunity to promote State Rep candidate Loretta Haldewang, probably our most likely pickup oppurtunity this year) after November will have the biggest say in redrawing Congressional maps based on the 2010 census numbers, and thus, will determine who controls the House after the 2012 elections.

Just ten days ago we saw the ouster of Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah by the Republican Party there and then West Virginia Democratic Rep. Allan Mollohan lost his primary. Both faced challengers from the right, but tonight saw more liberal Democrats take on more long-serving incumbents and win.  Rep. Joe Sestak toppled Republican-turned-Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania primary, and Sen. Blanche Lincoln was forced into a runoff by Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. While a big loss for the establishment, both Sestak and Halter do as well or better against GOP challengers according to the polls. As the Pennsylvania and Arkansas races are two of the top targets by Republicans in the fall, this is good news for Democrats who want to limit midterm losses. And they are the better Democrats!

Another good sign was the GOP’s failure to win a special election for the late Rep. John Murtha’s congressional seat in the 12th district of Pennsylvania. This is the kind of district (carried by McCain in 2008) that the Republicans need to win in order to take control of the House in November, but they couldn’t quite do it. They are expected to win a special election for Hawaii’s first congressional district this Saturday, but that’s only because two Democrats are on the ballot and will probably split the vote too much and be edged out. That seat will more than likely be regained in the fall. No doubt, the GOP would rather have won the Pennsylvania seat tonight, as it is the stronger bellweather for what might happen later this year.

In Kentucky, Rand Paul, son of libertarian Rep. Ron Paul, easily won the Republican Senatorial primary, beating the establishment candidate backed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell handily; Attorney General Jack Conway won the Democratic nomination (Kentucky definitely leans Republican, but polls show Conway had the best chance against Paul, and like Sestak and Halter, he’s also the better Dem). This all also fuels the narrative that this maybe more of an anti-incumbent year than an anti-Democratic year. That’s still bad for Democrats as they are a majority of incumbents, but it means Democrats at least aren’t disadvantaged in races where there’s no incumbent or a Republican incumbent.

All in all, this was a very good night for Democrats and progressives. Find more detailed results here.

Election Day is exactly six months away and things don’t look so great for Democrats this fall. Historically, the president’s party loses seats in midterms, with rare exceptions, but the current polling and indicators don’t suggest this will be one of those. President Obama’s and Congressional Democrats’ approval ratings are down, unemployment is still high, and there’s a 20-point Republican lead among voters most enthusiastic to vote. Not to mention that midterm voters tend to be older and whiter, so a lot of the larger base that went for President Obama in 2008 that included minorities and college kids aren’t going to come out to vote without him on the ballot.

So how bad is it looking? When it comes to Congressional races, it doesn’t quite look like Republicans will gain enough seats to take the House (there doesn’t appear to be enough competitive races for them to take the Senate), but we won’t know until September or October. The Republicans need a 40 seat gain to take the House and a 10 seat gain to take the Senate. The historical average is 24 seats and 4 seats, respectively, but parties can and have often done better. Larry Sabato, who is usually spot on, currently predicts a 27 seat House gain and 7 seat Senate gain for Republicans, though some are predicting a larger gain in the House (it’s certainly possible). He is also predicting a net gain of 7 governorships for the GOP, which would give them a majority in the country.

Chris Cillizza’s The Fix at the Washington Post does a really good job running down the top races in each category:

House

Senate

Gubernatorial

One governor’s race left off “The Line” is our own here in Texas. But the last poll from Rasmussen Reports shows Gov. Rick Perry leading by just four points over Bill White, who is still making himself known. I’ll update on our other statewide races and legislature races as we get closer and more information comes out. Winning the governorship and/or state house would be highly beneficial not just for obvious reasons, but because whomever wins will be in charge of redistricting for the 2012 races (though we may lose out on an extra seat due to low census response).

Anyway, we’ll see how things developed over the next few months. We have a long way to go and political winds can shift either way.

On the one year anniversary of President Barack Obama’s election, Democrats aren’t feeling as great about things as they probably hoped:

In a stunning upset, Republican Scott Brown, a little-known state senator just weeks ago, Tuesday trounced Democrat Martha Coakley to win a Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat and jolt Washington’s Democratic leaders with a victory that imperils President Barack Obama’s agenda, led by his bid to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

Brown, 50, mobilized voters in one of the nation’s most Democratic states — voters frustrated by the sluggish economy, angry about big government and uneasy about changes in health care. He led Coakley, 56, who conceded defeat shortly before 10 P.M., by 52 to 47 percent with 99 percent of precincts reporting.

With his victory, the first time since 1972 that a Republican has won a Massachusetts Senate race, Brown will take the “Kennedy seat” occupied by Sen. Edward Kennedy for 47 years before his death in August and once held by John F. Kennedy before he became president in 1961.

What went wrong?  Most agree Coakley ran a simply awful campaign, and the Republican base was much more energized. This is definitely a wake up call to President Obama and Congressional Democrats to start delivering if they don’t want to to risk losing control this November.

The irony cannot be lost that Senator Kennedy, who long championed health care reform, was replaced by a Republican who opposes it and will deny Senate Democrats the 60 votes needed for its passage. But all hope is not lost:

To their credit, Washington Democrats haven’t given up. The White House is weighing a plan to pass the Senate bill immediately through the House, which would, with Obama’s signature, make it law automatically without Scott Brown or anyone else in the Senate getting another crack at it. Then the Democrats would use “reconciliation” budget rules to fix problems in the Senate version with 51 votes, per the agreement Obama has been working on for the last couple of weeks. This is a messy approach but doable.

Indeed, this will require holding moderate Democrats who fear they will suffer the same fate as Coakley if they support health care reform, while convincing House liberals to go along with the Senate version of the bill with the promise of improving it later.

If I were them, I’d do it. The Senate bill is far from perfect but still better than nothing. And its problems can be fixed through separate legislation. Let’s pass this thing and move on.

Yup, the 2010 political season has begun:

Sen. Byron Dorgan, a veteran North Dakota Democrat, gave Republicans an unexpected opportunity to capture a Senate seat after he announced plans to retire Tuesday. Separately, five-term Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., also plans to announce today that he won’t seek re-election this fall, according to Democratic officials who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement. 

This is actually something of a mixed bag for Democrats. Dorgan is a huge loss. He’s fairly progressive given the state he comes from and it’s gonna be a seat that will be extremely hard to defend for Democrats, particularly if popular Gov. John Hoeven decides to run. Democratic Rep. Earl Pomeroy is probably the only formiddable challenger Dems could put up.

Dodd’s exit, however, may be a blessing. He had become incredibly unpopular over the last year in his state and Republicans were salivating at a pick up oppurtunity in what is a very blue state. However, AG Richard Blumenthal has already announced his intention to run and he’s a very strong candidate.

So we’re looking at a likely loss and a likely hold right now for Democrats in the Senate. One thing’s for sure – 2010 will be a rough year for Democrats.

UPDATE: Somewhat consoling.

UPDATE II: I’ll take this as well.