Hope Springs Eternal

The conclusion of a Politico article musing about the prospect of Democrats picking up a ton of Senate seats this year closes with Republicans sounding an optimistic note: “’2010 looks pretty good for us to pick up three or four or five seats pretty easily,’ the McCain official said.” Color me skeptical. These are the Democratic incumbents up for re-election in 2010:

• Bayh, Evan (D-IN)
• Boxer, Barbara (D-CA)
• Dodd, Christopher J. (D-CT)
• Dorgan, Byron L. (D-ND)
• Feingold, Russell D. (D-WI)
• Inouye, Daniel K. (D-HI)
• Leahy, Patrick J. (D-VT)
• Lincoln, Blanche L. (D-AR)
• Mikulski, Barbara A. (D-MD)
• Murray, Patty (D-WA)
• Obama, Barack (D-IL)
• Reid, Harry (D-NV)
• Salazar, Ken (D-CO)
• Schumer, Charles E. (D-NY)
• Wyden, Ron (D-OR)

Now various folks on this list could lose given a good GOP challenger and the right political climate. But in a generic sense, only Dorgan and Lincoln look like genuinely promising pickup opportunities here. Conversely, on the GOP side Sam Brownback has said he’s going to retire and even though Kansas is hardly the most Democratic-friendly state out there, you’ve got to figure that Kathleen Sebelius would be a pretty strong candidate. Jim Bunning, John McCain, and Arlen Specter all also strike me as fair chances to retire and the latter two, at least, would create very appealing pickup opportunities for the Democrats. Needless to say events between then and now will determine the actual outcome, but the basic shape of the landscape seems pretty even to me, certainly not something that would lead to a generic prediction of a 3-5 seat GOP pickup.