One hears a lot of speculation about the Republicans’ chances of taking over one or both houses of Congress in November. If you have too much time on your hands you could follow daily (and more than daily) updates on the 37 Senate races that will be on the ballot. Even a political junkie like me has to tune it out a bit. But with almost all of the primaries done, perhaps it’s OK to take an overview of the landscape of Senate races (House races another day perhaps, but that can really make you nuts —there are 435 of them).

There is little disagreement among handicappers that the Repubs will make big gains this year. It’s routine and expected for the party in the White House to lose seats in the midterms, but this seems likely to be a better than average for the current out party — the Repubs.

Still, from where things stand now, the odds appear high that the Dems will still control the Senate during the second half of the President Obama’s term. The biggest reason, which isn’t often remarked upon, is almost pure luck. There are 37 Senate seats on the ballot this year. The Repubs will probably win a solid majority of them, maybe even two-thirds, maybe close to three-fourths! But because of the big Dem successes over the past two cycles (2006 and 2008), a large number of Dems — including a lot of freshmen (bear in mind that incumbents are often most vulnerable on their first reelection bid) — aren’t on the ballot this year.

Of the 63 seats that are not up this year, Dems hold 40 and Repubs hold 23. This is big. It means that of the 37 that are up, the Dems need to hold only 10 to maintain control. (Another aside: A 50-50 Senate still equals Dem control because the vice president, who holds the tie-breaking vote, is Joe Biden.)

(And, an aside to that aside: When Biden became veep, it seemed unlikely that Dems would have to worry about his seat. Delaware is a solidly Democratic state with a Dem governor who appointed a Dem caretaker to serve out Biden’s term. Biden’s son Beau was considered the likely best in any race to fill the seat. But when Mike Castle — a former governor, sitting congressman and by far the biggest Repub name in Delaware politics — decided to seek the Senate seat (despite the fact that he will be a 71-year-old freshman), he became the instant frontrunner. Beau Biden decided not to risk his political career on a Senate bid. Castle is now heavily favored to turn that seat from blue to red.)

But to nail down the point I was making before the double aside: In order to gain control of the Senate, the Repubs would need to win 28 of the 37 races. Not sayin’ that’s impossible, but that kind of sweep is a very tall order.

So let’s take a quick overview four news organizations that maintain an ever-changing assessment of  every single Senate race: Congressional Quarterly, the Cook Political Report, the New York Times and the Rothenberg Political Report. Each of them has been doing this for a long-time; each has a solid reputation as race trackers.

Each of them uses slightly different terminology and methodology. The NY Times has just five categories for the seats that are up this year: Solid for the Dems, likely to be won by the Dems, a toss-up, likely Repub and Solid Repub. CQ and Cook have seven categories (they divide the close but not quite toss-up races into likely and leaner categories). Stu Rothenberg gives himself the most options (nine) that range on each side of the divide from solid (for one party or the other) to a toss-up that Rothenberg thinks “tilts” ever-so-slightly Dem or Repub.

For comparison purposes, I’ll ignore those fine gradations and group everyone’s leaners, likely and tilters together so that every race is listed as either not on ballot (and held by Dem or Repub), solid for one party or the other (meaning not considered in play), and leaning one way or the other (whether the lean is listed as a lean, a likelihood or a tilt).

Category 1: Dem-held seats not up this year.
Category 2: Safe for the Dem.
Category 3: Likely, leaning or tilting to the Dem.
Category 4: Pure Toss-up.
Category 5: Likely, leaning or tilting to the Repub.
Category 6: Safe for the Repub.
Category 7: Repub-held seat not up this year.

So here’s one way to look at the overall takeaway, remembering that this is just four assessments two months before Election Day: If you assume that each party will get the seats that are currently leaning its way, and if you assume that the toss-ups will be roughly split, but if you assume that the Repubs get the “extra” toss-up when there is an odd number, it comes out:

NY Times: Dem majority by 55-45

CQ: Dem majority by 54-46

Cook Political Report: Dem majority by 54-46.

Rothenberg Report: Dem majority by 52-48.

Political handicappers often point out that the toss-ups usually don’t split down the middle. One side or the other usually gets most of them, based on late momentum. But a complete sweep of the toss-ups is unusual. In order to construct a Repub majority from this point, you have to surmise that the Repubs get a very big majority of the toss-ups. On the NY Times or Rothenberg charts, Repubs could sweep the toss-up and still be in the minority. On the CQ or Cook lines, the Repubs would need 12 out of 13 of the toss-up to get to 51.

Again, all of these numbers are just the educated guesses of political savvy prognosticators looking at a lot of polls and other factors. (In fact, the numbers above were current as of Friday but may have changed by the time you are reading this.) And take into account a considerable enthusiasm gap that keeps showing up between likely Repub and Dem voters. Still, pouring all that salt over the possibilities, the chart convinces me that to take control of the Senate, the Republicans will have to draw to an inside straight.

Addendum: Obviously, the various raters are not unanimous about which are the toss-up races. Rothenberg has the small number because he is willing to assign a race to the blue or red side based on a lean so small that he calls it only a tilt. Cook and CQ have the biggest toss-up lists and they agree on 12 out of the 13 that they put in that category.

But if you want to know which races all four agree are in the Toss-up category, they are the Senate races in Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

One last addendum: There’s another possibility almost too funny to mention (although this situation has recently come to pass in the Senate, in 2001, when liberal Repub Sen. Jim Jeffords left the Repubs and switched to an independent caucusing with the Dems, giving the Dems majority control).

This year, there is the Florida Senate race, where current Gov. Charlie Crist — a lifelong Repub who launched an independent candidacy only after it became clear that he would lose the Republican primary for Senate — has a serious chance to win as an independent. In fact, he has led in five of the last 10 polls published on pollster.com. If Crist wins that race and we end up with a Senate balanced on the head of a pin, the moderate Republican turned independent Crist could hold the balance of power.

Crist has refused to say which party he would caucus with.

If you like to follow on your own the Senate-watching ratings of the publications in the table above, here’s Rothenberg, here’s CQ, here’s Cook and here’s the NY Times.

Right after the big health care bill squeaked through in March, there was a lot of talk about how public suppport for the law would increase once people got past the misleading Republican rhetoric about "socialized medicine" and how the bill established "death panels" to decide when to "pull the plug on granny."

You can find polls suggesting that the public likes various features of the bill, but at the level of impact on the midterm election, it seems that the 2009 health care debate is still helping Republicans and hurting Democrats in 2010. My buddy tom Hamburger's story yesterday in the L.A. Times presents the latest evidence, in the form of TV advertising. For example, from Tom's story:

"Since the bill passed in March, $23.3 million has been spent on ads attacking the law, compared with $6.3 million supporting the legislation."

You could say this is a mixture of cause and effect, not a measure of the public's true feelings. But the worst sign that Democrats don't think so is this finding: The only Democrats in midterm races that Tom could find who are advertising about the new law are those who voted against it and want to make sure voters know that.

Now a group of organizations that support the bill, in coordination with the White House, are gearing up for another effort to convince the public that the law does more good than harm to the health care system. From Tom's story:

A nationwide, multimillion-dollar ad offensive — organized in consultation with the White House and funded by sympathetic groups and wealthy individual donors — is set to kick off in the coming days. At the same time, dozens of leading consumer advocates, patient associations and medical groups, working independently and alongside the Obama administration, are scrambling to put together initiatives to tout the law's benefits.

Those will have to be some very good ads. Also from the story:

"A recent survey by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly half of the country's seniors think — erroneously — that the law creates a new government panel to make decisions about end-of-life care for people on Medicare.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff noted that voters also still think the law will lead to higher health costs, taxes and deficit spending, and lower quality of care — impressions that provide a clear advantage to Republicans."

A small p.s. I have often referred to the law as "Obamacare." Tom notes that this is a term mostly used -- derisivly -- by opponents. I've had some pushback from those objected to my use of the word. I confess that I don't get it. Seems like a neutral nickname for the law. Its official name is "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act."

IP guv nominee Tom Horner can't afford much high-priced TV advertising so he's taking his man-in-the-middle message to the bathrooms of the State Fair.

The poster ads, on the walls of the bathrooms, presumably over the urinals in the case of the men's rooms, has a picture of Horner and says:

"Too far right. Too far left. Not good in here. Not good in the governor's office."

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann opened the TV version of her reelection campaign yesterday with a simple message: Her DFL opponent, state Sen. Tarryl Clark, has voted for tax increases often during her career in the Legislature. It’s an almost insultingly simple message, but many small government conservatives have done well with it, and it has the undeniable merit of being true.

The same cannot be said for a Bachmann fundraising appeal that fell into my hands recently. It contains one fairly colossal whopper that FactCheck.org examined months ago and denounced as a “wildly inaccurate” partisan analysis based on guesswork and false assumptions, and “compounded by outright misrepresentation,” a second falsehood that treats an unofficial projection of the debt in the year 2020 as if it has already occurred and engages in such over-the-top rhetoric about the dangers of top Democrats that you know it would fly only with the already-converted base of Bachmann supporters for whom a letter like this is intended.

Picking up on that last point first, this is a fundraising letter, not an advertisement for a general audience. It is mailed to recipients whom the campaign believes are potential contributors, not by swing voters who might be offended such over-the-top stuff.  This is normal. Fundraising letters often throw out red meat. Still it seems reasonable to hold a candidate accountable any public or semi-public communications that go out over her name.

Case 1: The letter, which never mentions Tarryl Clark and is mostly an attack by name on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Obama, says that Pelosi and Obama “rammed a socialized medicine plan through Congress that’s so expensive it requires 16,500 new IRS agents just to make sure you are paying plenty of taxes to fund it.”

The case of the 16,500 new IRS agents
You can argue about some of the word choices, like “socialized medicine” (I would call that one false) or even “rammed through.” But focus on the one hard fact asserted, the 16,500 new IRS agents. It borders on nonsense.

I asked the Bachmann campaign for its source and was referred to this piece from the free righty paper The Washington Examiner. The assertion about IRS agents traces back to a study by the Republican staff of the Ways and Means Committee, which took a statement from a CBO estimate of the cost of the big health care bill and made several transparently unsafe assumptions.

Here is how FactCheck.org rated the statement. The IRS apparently will need some new employees to implement its responsibilities under the Obamacare law, but the number assigned by the Republicans is a significant exaggeration and, if you care, the task of the new hires will not be “to make sure you are paying plenty of taxes to fund it.” Rather, FactCheck wrote, their task will be “to inform many small-business owners of a new tax credit that the new law grants them — starting this year — which will pay up to 35 percent of the employer’s contribution toward their workers’ health insurance.”

The tripling of the debt?
The Bachmann letter also asserts that the team of Pelosi and Obama “have TRIPLED our national debt, spent Trillions we don’t have on massive new government programs we don’t need, and as a result 3.6 million more Americans are now unemployed.”

The national debt has definitely grown since Obama took office, but it hasn’t doubled and certainly not tripled. Bachmann blundered on her debt calculation previously, when she switched back and forth between the two different ways the national debt is calculated in order to overstate the growth of the debt during Obama’s first year.

But even that exaggeration only made the debt double under Obama (it didn’t, but it has certainly grown). And at first I assumed that the fund-raising letter was making the same mistake again. But when I asked for the source, Bachmann campaign spokester Sergio Gor referred me to this piece by the Heritage Foundation, which says that based on various assumptions not shared by the administration, the debt is on a path to triple by 2020 from the debt Obama inherited from his predecessor.

I certainly hope that won’t happen, but if it does it will still be a far cry from a Bachmann statement made in a 2010 letter to potential donors claiming that the tripling had already occurred.

The damage to the Constitution?
The fund-raising letter says:

“Nancy Pelosi and President Obama are systematically undermining the foundations of our Constitution, our democracy, our economy and our freedom.”

Regular readers of Black Ink know that I am fairly obsessed with the Constitution and with the claim of Tenthers, including Bachmann, that Obama routinely violates the Constitution by grabbing new powers not properly delegated by the charter.

When I read the statement in the fundraising letter, I assumed that Bachmann was making the same argument, and perhaps she was. When I asked spokester Gor for the most specific backup he could provide for the statement about the damage to the Constitution, his reply was fairly general. It read:

“When referring to ‘systematically undermining the foundations of our Constitution’ Congresswoman Bachmann is referring to the shocking power grabs, the fundamental changes in our way of life that this Congress is imposing and the broad definition which this administration has twisted the Constitution into, only to fit their activist agenda. There is not one aspect we can point at; it’s the general attitude towards reforming or changing what the Constitution has meant all these years.”

What think?

As I mentioned in the post just below, both the Michele Bachmann and Tarryl Clark campaigns were promising more data about the Bachmann TV ad just unveiled. In Bachmann's case, it's mostly documentation of the claim in the ad that Clark has voted for higher taxes every year she was in the Legislature.

In the rebuttal, Clark Campaign Manager Zach Rodvold doesn't dispute the votes, but launches a many-faceted counterargument that Clark has been the more fiscally responsible of the two and that Clark also cast several votes to lower taxes. (Rodvold also tries to ding Bachmann for "name-calling," which is perhaps a reference to Bachmann's effort to nickname her opponent "Taxin' Tarryl." But certainly Clark has made many unflattering references to Bachmann and her record.)

This, of course, is in some sense a recapitulation of most of the overall argument between the two campaigns, but nothing much new is being asserted. If you'd like to read the two press releases, here's Bachmann's and here's Clark's.