Redstate

I predict a pickup for the DFL.

_Evil prevails only when good men do nothing._

and all of the money that will be used to distort the election will make him win.

Hell, we just elected Amy Klobo in a landslide, despite the fact that she refused to stake out positions on anything (inlcuding Iraq) and nearly elected joke Mike Hatch to Gov.

Oh yea, we just elected someone who supports cop-killers (ellison in MN-05) to congress.

_Evil prevails only when good men do nothing._

Yes, we have 21 seats up. But most of them are in red states and are being contested in a year that will have a presidential election that could very well lead to a bump for those candidates. In a neutral year (meaning no distinct advantage for either party), there would probably be 3 vulnerable (Coleman in MN, Smith in OR, Sununu in NH). Allard is only vulnerable if there's a top flight challenger, and last time he faced one he beat him. Collins in ME looks about as beatable as Olympia Snowe was this time around.

Possible retirements could lead to open seats in AK (Stevens), NM (Domenici) and VA (Warner). And in AK the seat would likely lean our way even so. So we're talking probably 7 seats to watch at this point.

But the Dems have their own problems. They are defending 5 seats in red states (Baucus in MT, Johnson in SD, Landrieu in LA, Pryor in AR, Rockefeller in WV). They too have "retirement watch" candidates in Carl Levin (MI), Tom Harkin (IA) and Lautenberg (NJ).

And finally, as we've seen this year, recruitment makes all the difference - good recruitment could make otherwise "safe" seats interesting, and bad rercruitment could put a winnable seat out-of-reach. That's true of both sides. Most of the air for 2008 will be sucked out of the room by the presidential race, so I don't know that anybody will be making any committments to run until they have a better idea of what the top of the ticket will look like (and hence what kind of coattails they might get from it).