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Basically, Republicans maxed out in '02 and '04. They have, for practical purposes, all the seats that can be gotten for them out of the South and Midwest. In the process they've become utterly identified with the interests that constitute majority opinion/power in these districts and states.
This means that they've become exclusive and they can't/don't actually represent the interests competing with those in the country. This amounts to de facto political overextension in the Northeast, Great Lakes, Upper Midwest, West, and Florida south of Orlando.
Basically, the '06 elections look, overall, like one further intensification of the Red/Blue map to me, with the '08 elections perhaps another. Unlike '02 and '04, it will be the Blue becoming more intense and squelching out Red in its regions and pushing it out in swing states.
We're starting to see Republican Congresscritters fading out everywhere in the Northeast. Chaffee, Jeffords, and Santorum are gone for practical purposes; it's not clear whether Olympia Snowe is going to run for reelection and the substantive Maine rationales for electing Republicans- funding of Bath Iron Works and the residual military bases- are obsolete. When Specter resigns- and he's sick enough that it's not far off- Rendell is going to appoint Barbara Hafer or Joe Hoeffel to his seat; Rendell has supposedly rejected Specter's attempts to deal for a Republican appointee. It's quite possible that Susan Collins and the New Hampshire duo will be the last Republican Senators at home north of the Potomac in '07.
House district gerrymanders for Republicans and Republican incumbents are looking pretty shaky in the Northeast, too- all three in Connecticut are looking dicey, 2-3 New York ones are in trouble, between 6 and 10 Pennsylvanian ones around Philly and Pittsburgh are looking close enough for some really serious Democratic efforts. New Jersey is being rather recalcitrant relative to its neighbors, but there are at least two or three districts that are Democratic but held by pretty objectionable Republicans.
The pattern/trend/effect of Republican softening is showing up everywhere else in the Blue States and swing states in smaller ways so far, but there are definite indications. There are all the recruiting failures that the RNC is having in states where Republicans have good chances- no one to challenge Bingaman, Kohl, Stabenow, Cantwell, Dorgan, or give Hillary Clinton or Diane Feinstein or Joe Lieberman anything of a run. Mark Pryor and the two Nelsons aren't facing first tier competition, and second raters they can beat. Shelly Capito isn't coming out against Bob Byrd, just hoping to get him to retire. Rove is focussing on fighting back for likely Democratic Senate gains in open seats in Maryland and Minnesota- he has great opportunities, but the odds of his efforts having enough staying power in those electorates, no matter how hard he shakes them up for latent conservatism, aren't actually good in either one. Democrats are in turn quietly closing in on the weakening incumbent Republican Senators in Nevada, Ohio, Montana, Arizona, and Missouri.
As for the House, the picture is that gerrymanderings everywhere outside the South and Southern Plains are not looking durable for Republicans. There are 2-3 vulnerable Californian ones, Reichardt in Washington State, the two Twin Cities suburbia ones, the Green Bay one, one or two in Chicago suburbia, one or two in Iowa, two or three in Indiana, half a dozen in Ohio, three or four in southern Florida, one or two in northern Virginia. The handful of swing districts created in '02 in the Southwest but all won by Republicans then are all looking vulnerable. These developments track parallel with the local Republican state parties going into nosedives.
There is a bunch of stuff going on in the South proper, i.e. Georgia and Tennessee. I don't really bother with them- though they are necessarily important to people in the region- because I don't see signs of Republican power being truly broken there in '06 as elsewhere. I see them hanging in there regionally. The big year for Democrats there would seem to be '08.
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