Let’s go ahead and pop this balloon before it takes flight.
Ken Mehlman, this morning on Today:
“[W]hen it comes to both the House and the Senate, we obviously always knew this would be a tough year. We had a combination of, not only the fact that it’s the 6th year of the President’s term, where typically you lose more than 30 seats. Also the nation’s at war, where typically you lose seats, as Tim [Russert] pointed out last night. And the fact that a number of members unfortunately were involved in scandal.
Typically lose more than 30 seats? You might guess that Mehlman was not challenged by the Today hosts on this little flight of expectation-lowering fantasy. And it appears to be one of the GOP’s morning-after talking points.
Here are the number of House seats lost by the President’s party in the 6th year of his presidency during the post-war period. I pulled the numbers from the House website and quickly did the math:
1958: Eisenhower–Republicans lost 48 seats
1986: Reagan–Republicans lost 5 seats
1998: Clinton–Democrats gained 5 seats
So only once in the last half century has the President’s party lost more than 30 seats in the second-term midterms.
The 1974 midterms, in which the Republicans lost 48 House seats in the aftermath of Watergate, occurred after Nixon resigned.
Of course, if Mehlman wants to compare the sea-change that followed the dark period of Watergate to the sea-change that occurred yesterday, I have no objections. Quite an apt comparison in many ways.
Here’s our rundown of the 13 House races that are still in contention.
Our TPM intern Eric Kleefeld just pointed out to me that if Joe Courtney’s lead holds up in Connecticut 2nd, this election will leave just one Republican congressman in all New England. That’s a watershed.
Donald Rumsfeld resigning, according to the AP.
Update: Bush just announced that Robert Gates, the CIA Director under Bush 41, will replace Rumsfeld.
Watching this Bush presser, one thing about Republicans: man, they dispatch their dead quickly, don’t they? I thought the most revealing line so far of the press conference was when Bush said he still hasn’t spoken to Rumsfeld or Gates. The exact phrase was something like ‘final conversation’. But I think the meaning there was clear.
Late Update: Okay, I think this presser may actually set a record for open and shut contradictions. But about five minutes after saying he hadn’t had his final convos, he just said that he had. In the course of the last few minutes he’s also said both that he hadn’t decided to replace Rummy pre-election, and that he had. I think he also said he lied to the reporters in the pre-election conversation he had on Rumsfeld.
Later Update: I haven’t seen the transcript yet. But a number of readers have written in to say that they think I may have misheard some of the passages in the president’s remarks about final conversations and who talked to whom when.
The AP and MSNBC call Montana for Jon Tester. See our scoreboard here.
Update: CNN too.
TIME: House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) won’t run for GOP leadership.
I’m not afraid to say it. At first, the president seemed hesitant and a bit shell-shocked. But then he hit a stride. And all things considered, I think he did reasonably well in that presser. Talk’s cheap. And I don’t think a leopard changes his spots. But judged on its own terms I think he did reasonably well.
Also, here’s the big story: Bob Gates is very much Daddy’s guy.
Late Update: TPM Reader JS sees it a bit differently: “Josh, get some sleep that was a meltdown.”