For all I know, Nagourney is a very nice, intelligent and reasonable guy, but take a look at his piece today. Or rather, you don’t need to take a look at his piece today because it is exactly the same as all of his pieces: Dems in disarray, quote a GOP operative, quote a Dem operative, quote another GOP operative, end the story. He doesn’t mention that Dodd’s retirement strengthens the Dems until the 13th graf, and the greater number of GOP retirements until the 21st graf. I think he’s supposed the be the NYT’s national political correspondent, but if every story is the same, what exactly is he being paid for?
At least we didn’t get the series of anonymous quotes from “Democratic sources” expressing worry about one thing or another. Jeez…
I agree that these pieces are repetitive in general, but the bit about the GOP retirements really may not be such an important point to highlight. If they’re all or mostly in safe GOP districts, then it really doesn’t matter how many more GOP retirees there are (except in the very minor sense that it costs the party more to contest an open seat). Do you really think Kansas, in 2010, is going to replace Sam Brownback with a Democrat? Of course not. Rather than simple gross comparison of retirements, he’d do better to give us a comparison of likely competitive races. The Dems may have a real chance to take Cao’s House seat and Gregg’s Senate seat, but which others? None that come to my mind.
Nate Silver has seven Republican seats among his top 15 turnover prospects. He estimates the Democrats’ losing an expected value of just under two seats, and gives a 25-30% probability of the Dems’ holding 60 seats (or better).
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/2010-senate-races-present-rewards-but.html
Silver has only one in his top six. And he describes his predictions as “fuzzy guesstimates”, which is what they are. (I can tell you that I think the chances that Blunt will win in Missouri–despite being the worst possible candidate–are better than 50% His chances are certainly better than Reid’s or Lincoln’s.)