New York Times sees Republican victory
This evening, I happened to stumble on a 2006 Election Guide Calculator at The New York Times. Expecting to see an example of the Doomsday scenario we've been hearing about all year from the likes of prospective House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it was a bit of a surprise when I set the calculator to display the likely results as divined by The Times' prognosticators.
Even assuming a sweep in their favor of all the closest races (marked in yellow as toss-ups by The Times), the Democrats get no closer than 216 seats in the House - two seats short of the 218 needed to assume the majority.
Things don't look much better for Majority Leader wannabe Harry Reid in the Senate.
The Times assumes Republicans already hold or have the edge in enough 2006 races to account for all 51 Senate seats they need to keep conrol in the next Congress. Three Republican incumbents (Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Jim Talent of Missouri, and Conrad Burns of Montana) are in toss-ups, and Rick Santorum is expected to lose his seat in Pennsylvania. But losing these four seats just reduces Republicans to the bare majority of 51, since we now hold 55 seats.
If even The New York Times expects the best the Democrats can do is come tantalizingly close, and only if they sweep ALL the available toss-ups, why have we been subjected to such intense rhetoric from the MSM to the contrary?
