Hope for Democrats in the fall?

Experience shows that the president's party usually loses seats in Congress in midterm elections, also that the party in power loses seats when the economy doing poorly. So by all rights Democrats should lose seats in the House and Senate in November. The question is how bad the losses will be - will the Republicans take over the House and (less probable) the Senate?

Until the health care vote I would have said the probability of the Republicans taking the House was 50-50 or better. Now I'm more optimistic, and here's why. Three things need to happen for the Democrats to keep losses to a minimum.

(1) Pass health insurance reform. This gives Democrats a record of accomplishment, washes the stink of loserhood off of them. It will also provide concrete benefits that Democrats can point to in the upcoming campaign - no denial of insurance to children because of pre-existing conditions, subsidies for small businesses to pay for health insurance, allowing children up to age 26 to be covered under their parents' insurance, and so on.

(2) The economy needs to start recovering vigorously. Happily, this seems to be happening. The March employment numbers will be an important indicator of things to come.

(3) The Republicans need to overreach. This too seems to be happening. Here we see Republican Congressmen making fools of themselves with the Tea Partiers. Here the Republicans allow Michelle Bachman to be their spokesman in vowing to repeal the bill. Here we see why basing a campaign on repeal of health reform is not likely to work. Come campaign season, voters are not going to want to hear Republicans lambasting the health reform bill. They are going to want to hear what the candidates have to say about the economy, financial reform, the budget deficit, immigration, and so on, not have them rehash the arguments they made months earlier about a bill that has already been passed and signed. The Republicans are going to have to moderate their tone and focus on other issues if they want to sweep - but the issues that are going to be discussed in months to come like financial regulation are not winners for the Republicans, and the base will not let them moderate.

So the three things that need to happen for Democrats to survive are happening. I'm cautiously optimistic. Still, November is a long way away and things can change rather suddenly, as we have seen.