I still think 2006 will be sort of a 1996/1998 midterm: the party in power loses a few seats, but nothing to change the balance of power.

If the Dems really want to lose another election, they should promise to impeach Bush immediately upon gaining control of Congress. We could actually have our 60 seats in the Senate should they campaign on that.
 

Ha ha ha ha! Just as planned, the Democrats are falling right into a masterful Republican trap! Along with Olympia Snowe! And Arlen Specter! And, er, John McCain! And, ahem, Larry Craig! And, um, James Sensenbrenner! And, cough, Trent Lott! And, well, er, Chuck Hagel, John Sununu, Lisa Murkowski, Lindsey Graham....

Thank God for faithful Joe "Rummy" Lieberman, huh?
 

McCain and Hage are Republicans? Since when?l
 

...and Snowe, and Specter, and Graham (and BTW, Lott's vote was procedural -- by voting with the prevailing side, he is able to call for a re-vote in the future). And Sensenbrenner is one of ~230 House Repubs -- so what's yer point?
 

I think the point is that when Republicans are peeling away from George W. Bush in a Congress so tight they had to fly Cheney across the ocean to cast a vote, it ain't good for the big man.

Ignore Trent Lott's procedural vote-- he has been very snipey, and less committed to party unity, for a year. Whether it's because he's smelling Bush's blood in the water or just because he's still peeved about being removed from the majority leader's seat doesn't matter much. The point is that Lott's support is no longer a given. Worse for Bush, Lott didn't get to be majority leader by being tone deaf to the prevailing political winds.

Lott's not the only conservative to gallop out of the corral. When a South Carolina Republican like Graham can make the rounds on TV, essentially calling Bush a lawbreaker over the spying issue, you know there's a collective sense that Bush is becoming increasingly irrelevant to 2006 and 2008. Some GOP candidates were already saying "thanks but no thanks" to Bush's involvement on their campaign trails in the '05 and '04 elections; 2006 will be very telling for this trend.
 

If the economy continues to steam along at 3-4% growth and...

Facts: they're our fair-weather friends.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/23/ap/business/mainD8EM19TO9.shtml

New Home Sales Plummet in November (AP)

Sales of new homes plunged in November by the largest amount in nearly 12 years, providing the most dramatic evidence yet that the red hot housing market over the last five years is starting to cool down.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that new single-family homes were sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.245 million units last month, a drop of 11.3 percent from October, when sales had surged to an all-time high.

Last month's decline was even bigger than the 8.7 percent drop-off that Wall Street analysts had been expecting. While sales of both new and existing homes are still on track to set records for a fifth straight year in 2005, analysts are forecasting sales will decline in 2006 as the housing boom quiets down.