Don't be silly.

Of course, if you are reading or listening to the elite media, the American public is ready to "throw the bums out". Of course every so often you get a glimmer of political reality like the 89-10 vote to renew the Patriot Act with only token changes to some minor provisions.

The reality of Congressional races is that they are less about the emphermal national mood and far more about concrete factors like demographics, the economy, encumbency and who controls the state house.

Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics outlines the realities of this election cycle and how they will affect the outcome.

All political scientists agree that open seats are a key method of party changes in the House of Representatives. Only a half dozen (or fewer) incumbents tend to lose every year, so an open seat is the only way for a challenger to get around what is known as the “incumbency advantage”. This is the massive advantage that incumbent politicians enjoy in terms of money, approval rating and name recognition; because of this advantage, contests where the incumbent is running tend to be referenda on the incumbent. It is in open seat races where national trends can influence the election and where partisanship becomes more important. Thus, it is in open seat races – and open seat races alone – that the Republicans could seriously suffer from today’s anti-Republican mood. A handful of Republican incumbents will bite the bullet because of today’s political climate, but if the Democrats hope to retake the House, they will need to net a dozen or so open seats.

Cost analyses the election from the point of view of open seats, of which the Republicans have 17 and the Democrats 9. Open seats represent the best opportunity for change since the advantage of encumbency is negated. Yet Republican open seats are of "poor quality" for Democrats since they are in areas where Bush ran strongly in 2000, and even stronger in 2004.

The Cook Partisan Voting Index (named for Charlie Cook whose Cook Political Report is a valuable source of electoral political information) has the median value for these districsts as +5 Republican.

In the final analysis, Cost suggests that the Democrats might pick up 2 Republican open seats--CO-07 and IA-01

I suppose they could defeat 13 Republican encumbents to retake the house--but what would that take?

Historically, the relationship between public approval of Congress and changes in the number of seats is a little weird. Congressional approval worsened considerable between 2000 and 2002 (by 10%), but Republicans still picked up ten seats. In 1994, when Democrats lost 54 seats, Congressional approval had actually improved by 5 points over 1992.

A better indicator is the political climate for one party or the other and whether the top tier candidates for the challenging party think they have a chance to win. A good way to consider this is to look at the NY Senate race against Hillary Clinton. Why isn't say, Rudy Guiliani throwing his hat into the race? Guiliani has a good shot at higher office but he is going to make sure that when he takes it, he'll be sure to win. Absent that, your candidate is going to be a party-loyalist trading future consideration for political self-immolation. So are the Democrats putting up quality candidates against Republican candidates?

Nope.

Such a stand-pat outcome doesn't thrill the media who would prefer a lot more drama, but the reality is that the current political climate has a lot more to do with structural considerations than the weekly political flourishes we so enjoy blogging about.

In my view, the work that Howard Dean is supposed to be doing is far more important to the Crat's long-term prospects. Democrats act as if all their problems started in 1994, but the reality is that Republicans had been laying groundwork for the two decades previously. There are no magic bullets and the sooner the Crats resolve their own internal conflicts to come up with a consistent philosophy and buckle down to the hard work of evangelizing the country on the merits, the sooner they'll become a legitimate competitor for power.