Menendez has his hands full with the DSCC

by: Jason Springer

Thu Jan 07, 2010 at 11:30:00 AM EST

DSCC chair Robert Menendez, the chief of Dem efforts to hold the Senate, acknowledged that the party faces a "challenge" next year, and declined to predict whether Dems would hold their super-majority.

But Menendez pushed back hard on the emerging media meme that the Dem retirements spell doom for the party, arguing that the GOP is defending six open Senate seats. Menendez also refused to concede that Byron Dorgan's Senate seat is a certain pickup for the GOP, as many argue, vowing a vigorous contest for it, though he conceded that Rep Earl Pomeroy, the most sought after Dem candidate, wasn't running.

"I would say the optics of having six Republican open seats is more significant," Menendez insisted, when asked to comment on the Dems' chances in the wake of the news about the retirements. "They have to run the table to be even at the end of the day,"

He added five of the races in those states - Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Kansas - are "very competitive," and vowed that Dems would benefit from the "bloody" GOP primaries underway in them.

But when pressed, Menendez repeatedly refused to say whether he thought Dems would hold onto their 60-seat supermajority.

"Look, I'm not going to get into whether the super majority will be preserved or not," he said. "Midterm elections for the President's party are always a challenge."

Talking Points Memo looked at some of the seats the GOP must defend and says that GOP vulnerabilities might help the Democrats hold onto 60 seats. Chris Bowers at Open Left says the net effect is that we lose North Dakota and pick keep Connecticut. Over at FiveThirtyEight.com, Nate Silver has this take on how 2010 is shaping up and how it stacks up against past cycles:

There are an unusually large number of Senate races in play this year and as such there is an unusually large amount of uncertainty surrounding the outcome. It also bears remembering that, although I remain quite pessimistic about what will happen to Democrats in the House, the Senate playing field is intriniscally more favorable to them. The Senators who are up for re-election this year are those who were elected in 2004 -- a good cycle for Republicans. And while Democrats were hurt by their retirements in North Dakota, Delaware, New York, Illinois and probably Colorado (they were helped by Chris Dodd's retirement in Connecticut), the Republicans have created opportunities for them with the retirements in Missouri, Ohio, New Hampshire and perhaps Florida (they were helped by Jim Bunning's retirement in Kentucky). If the 2006 senate class were up for re-election this year, Democrats would potentially face very substantial losses, but fortunately for Democrats they aren't.

As such, I don't think it can be taken for granted that Democrats won't keep their "filibuster-proof" majority, or even expand upon it; I might put this possibility at something like 25-30 percent, following the Dorgan/Dodd retirements. On the other hand, the Democrats might also lose five, six, seven seats ... or perhaps more. I don't think the possibility of their losing their majority rates as higher than a small, single-digit number, although it cannot totally be ruled out if unexpected events (incapacitation of Robert Byrd and/or Daniel Inouye, a party switch from Joe Lieberman and/or Ben Nelson) come into play.

Not to mention the world is ending for Democrats, black Tuesday meme the media is enjoying from how the news was announced. Like I said in the title, Senator Menendez has his hands full at the DSCC. Oh an by the way, he's still got the day job as our Senator to occupy time as well.