Doesn't the history of off year elections in a President's second term strongly favor the minority opposition party? Five doesn't strike one as an overwhelming obstacle. With an enraged Gore and an uncaged Mass. Hamster campaigning for Senate and House candidates, I can see a major Democratic rally looming ahead. (ok, the last sentence was a joke) As variation of Newt's "Contract with America" the Democrats can run on the "Memorandum of Understanding, Disputes, Opening Negotiations, Speculative "Pie in the Sky" Promises, Points to Mull Over with America"

H: Right now, it looks like the Republicans would need some luck and a lot of skill to get 5 seats in order to have 60 seats, but given who's up, who's retiring and who's running, it is much, much less likely that the Dems will get five seats.

And, once again, the Dems are in the position of having to hope, openly, for some disaster to hit us. That's never a great position to be in in American politics -- even if disaster does hit.

h-man:

Yes, but often that's because a two-termer brought in a big crop of weak candidates with his coattails of his first election, and the sixth year is their first time at reelection. The recent big example is Reagan, who brought in an enormous GOP freshman class of Senators who captured the Senate, and who were defeated in '86 to lose the Senate.

When the current President Bush won in 2000, the Republicans had a very bad Senate year, losing 5 seats. Hence the 2006 class doesn't contain a whole bunch of vulnerable first term Republicans, but rather a bunch of first term Democrats.

Why the Casablanca reference? Is that meant to be a subtle allusion to the Bush = Hitler meme, or just the best line you could think up?

Just a general love of Casablanca. Actually, I posted this under another heading ("The Full Kinsley") and then went back and changed it.