The 2006 Midterm Elections

MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. Washington, as you know, is full of political junkies but very few true political gurus, and we are lucky to have one of those with us today. Chuck Todd, who you will probably know from the National Journal as a contributing editor, editor-in-chief of The Hotline and you'll see him on TV at MSNBC commenting. We're glad to have him with us today. Chuck will make his remarks and then we'll go to Q&A.

Thanks, Chuck.

CHUCK TODD: I'm going to try to stay relatively brief and let you guys decide how much detail you want to get into in different races and different things. But I figure I should just start off on just sort of like what's happened in the last couple of weeks. Because in the last couple of weeks, I think if you had polled all the people that are in charge of both parties of trying to figure out who's going to win these elections in '06, the Democrats or the Republicans, all the smart money, even I would have been with the Democrats about three weeks ago, and then a few things happened.

One was the special election that took place out in California. I don't know how closely some of you followed that, but the special elections replaced Duke Cunningham, a congressman who was sent off to prison. He's wearing pinstripes like myself today, but his pinstripes are a little bit broader and a little more black and white. And it was a Republican district, corruption was the main issue, or thought to be the main issue, Democrats poured a lot of money into it. And the assumption was if Democrats could win a seat like that, which was a very Republican seat, than it was going to be the sign -- the sign that this is not just going to be a good Democratic year, it was going to be a great Democratic year.

Well, the Republicans held that seat. And then President Bush got Zarqawi and then Karl Rove got off. And it was all this happened in sort of this one-week span and you could just sort of see the -- if you could visualize the Democrats were a face, you could just sort of see they've got this long face about them, realizing that, boy, this isn't going to be so easy. Just being on the ballot with a "D" next to your name isn't going to guarantee control of Congress. That this is going to take a lot of work and that, you know, it's possible the public is completely disgruntled with the Republicans, but they are not yet sold on Democrats.

I think when you ask the average swing voter how they feel about the two parties, and they'll tell you that they don't know what the Democrats stand for and they don't like what the Republicans have become. And that that is sort of where the middle, if there is a middle left in this country, but where the middle is sort of lying right now and why Democrats -- why Republicans feel better, that they feel like that suddenly they can win this on their terms and why Democrats are feeling kind of depressed and they're not sure what to do.

I feel bad that I'm taking you away from watching this debate that's taking place in the Senate today on Iraq between the Democrats -- and they're basically debating themselves, trying to figure out what they're supposed to do, what they're supposed to say, what they're supposed to stand for. And in some ways it's a mistake; they've taken the bait. The Republicans and President Bush and the White House they've set this up where they've made -- if you don't have -- you know, that there's basically two positions on Iraq: there's the correct position and everything other -- any other position is wrong and weak and it's cut and run. Now they've used three different -- they have three different terms they're using now. You're either for cut and run, cut and jog or cut and walk. So that they've taken every Democratic position that there is and there's probably about three. There's some that want the hard timetable and withdraw immediately. There's some that want some sort of ease to withdraw, redeployment, what Murtha talks about which is troops out of Iraq but not out of the region. And then there's the ones that are willing to stay the course if there is some sort of set of accountability or things like that. But the Republicans have framed the debate right now in such a way that the media is not letting up on the Democrats, that if the Democrats don't come up with a position, then the entire story line isn't the public's upset with the Administration on Iraq, it's the Democrats don't have a unified position on Iraq. And if that's the story line going into the fall, then you suddenly have a Republican party that feels a lot better about how to win a nationalized election.

In fact, last night we sent a reporter to this. Last night, Ken Mehlman, Chairman of the RNC, Karl Rove, did a rally with local -- most of them were Republican staffers who were going to do some volunteering on the campaign in the fall, and they were trying to rally them up. And they basically made the case that they're going to nationalize this election. That this is a one-issue election, and it's on the war.

But what's interesting is they didn't name the war. They just said it's on the war, they never said the word "Iraq." So it sort of gave you a clue that they want -- they are now embracing this idea of a nationalized election. They are more than willing to basically in their minds re-run 2004, you know, frame it in that way. As long as it's not about Iraq, they want to make it about the global war on terror. If the framework of the nationalized election is on the war on terror, global war on terror, and not Iraq, then the Republicans think they can win that argument.

And the Democrats look like they're taking the bait. You know, they're trying to find common ground on Iraq, and the thing is the public isn't interested in common ground. That's what's been sort of fascinating about the disconnect on this Iraq issue. And I think until we figure out -- until the two parties -- until the Democrats figure out how to tap into this on the Iraq front, we're not quite sure how these 2006 elections are going to play out.

Because you've got a public -- last week the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, one of the questions they asked is are you more likely or less likely to vote for a candidate who advocates withdrawal of troops in 12 months or less? Fifty-four percent said more likely. Among self-described independents, 54 percent said more likely. So the popular position is withdraw troops -- start withdrawing troops in Iraq in 12 months.

Now granted, there's -- you ask a poll question like that and then you could say well did they ask this, did they ask this. But the bottom line is the word "withdrawal" is a catch word with voters right now. That's what they want to hear. Anything short of that, then they're not interested and they seem to be upset about it.

Well, what's interesting, the Democrats seem to be afraid of that position in a unified way because you literally have about a third of the party which are internationalists and the presidential candidate types, Hilary Clinton, Joe Biden, who are afraid of having the party look weak on national security. And then you have these others who felt like they were punished at the polls for being for this war, John Kerry, John Edwards, who are now ready to be, you know, let's get out of Iraq and get fired up. And then you have the anti-war liberals who have always been there and now feel vindicated that, you know, we told you so, and now nothing is acceptable other than, you know, immediate withdrawal, let's do this, let's get out of this. And so it's not clear that they're going to have a unified message.

What the Democrats have got to figure out is how do they somehow turn this back, Iraq, back on the Republicans. And right now, with the assist of the media, the media has bought into the story line that it needs -- the story of Iraq right now isn't Republican or President Bush' accountability, it's the fact that the Democrats don't have a position on it. And until they figure out how to reframe that, that's going to cost them a lot of potential support in '06. And it sort of makes me hesitate about what's going to happen in '06 because I think the weaker they look on Iraq, the Democrats, the more and likely turnout is going to go down. More than likely they're going to have a hard time getting their basics sighted. That they're going to feel like here they go again, they're going to lose another election. And the Democratic turnout -- the Democratic base right now, the assumption is it's very fired up but the evidence is not there.

We've had a bunch of primaries. We had some primaries in California, Illinois, Iowa. We're not seeing evidence that somehow Democrats are surging to the polls, getting excited about the 2006 election. But we're also not seeing Republicans not showing up to the polls. You know, that was the other half of this argument of why Democrats are supposedly in much better shape than Republicans is that you were going to see a Democratic surge in excitement about the election and a Republican depression.
We have seen no evidence yet that somehow Republicans are turning out in less numbers, and we're certainly not seeing it in comparison to the Democrats.

So if you're suddenly sitting there on this sort of even playing field, which is where we were in 2004, then we're talking about this narrow slice of what I call the casual voter. Some people call them swing voters, but I call them casual voters because I think a swing voter doesn't swing between the two parties, they just swing between voting and not voting. As many of you know, you probably come from countries that actually participate in elections. Our country does not. We have 35, 40 percent turnout and that's a good day for elections. Every other democracy in the world has 70, 80 percent turnout. But it's that slice of voter, it's that slice of folks who vote in presidential elections who usually don't vote in a midterm election. And that's the game that the two parties are trying to figure out is how to either -- in this case it could be how the Republicans are trying to prevent sort of the casual voter from showing up and feeling comfortable going back and voting for Democrats again. Or vice versa, how the Democrats can get that casual democratic voter to feel so good about t his idea that they should get power again that they will show up to the polls in '06.

So the big picture right now I think is a lot fuzzier now than it was even three weeks ago. And it's June. One of the things that we like to caution people is in June of 1992, everybody thought a guy named Ross Perot was going to be President, and it turned out Bill Clinton was going to be President. In June of 2004, some people thought that John Kerry could win on a landslide. And obviously we know what happened. So June's a long way.

There does seem to be built in -- what's interesting is that while the Republicans have done a good job changing the story line and changing how Iraq is framed in the press, the voters haven't caught up to that yet or the voters aren't yet responding to that. And it's very likely that we could be having a very beltway or Washington-centric mentality on this Iraq thing in that we're all focused on the fact that geez, the Democrats aren't unified on Iraq, where the country is just like I don't care. You know, that direction is the wrong -- you know, I know that I don't like their position on Iraq, and that's all that matters.

So far that's what you see in the polls. I mean the Iraq position -- the President's Iraq position is not popular. It's still not popular. But the Republicans have made the decision that they're better off being in on this together because if they're not unified, they can see how it can break apart a party or it can really hurt them. You just sort of see what happened to the Democrats.

Let me just go in a little bit on some of the details on the Senate and the House a little bit and then I'll let you guys decide what states you want to touch on. But in the Senate, I think the Senate is a little more vulnerable to takeover actually than the House even though the conventional wisdom says it's the other way around.

If you look at recent history of Senate elections, they've all moved in the same direction at the end. If there's a slight wind at the back of the two parties, it seems like all the close Senate races the same party won eight the last nine or nine of the last 10 sort of toss-ups. The closest races in the final week always seem to go to the same party. In '98 it happened, in 2000 it happened, in '02 it happened, in '04 it happened. In '98 and 2000 it happened in favor of the Democrats. In '02 and '04 it happened in favor of the Republicans.

The Democrats need six to take control. It's pretty obvious how they get to five. It's states Pennsylvania, it's Ohio, it's Montana, it's Rhode Island and Missouri. Those are the five that they know they have a good shot at winning Senate seats there. The question is where do they find their sixth Senate seat in order to actually get control and prevent a 50/50 tie. And they're looking at places like Arizona, Virginia and Tennessee. Some people talk -- and really, any combination you could see how any one of them takes flight. I could also see how any two of those three end up not being on the radar screen by the end of October.

But the way I've watched Senate races move tells me that we're more likely to see the Senate flip. And if the House flips, the Senate will go too. I mean, the House won't go by itself. That's sort of the point here where I can see how the Senate goes by itself. Because frankly, the Democrats have done a better job at putting Senate seats in play and the Republicans have done a poor job at targeting vulnerable Democratic incumbents. They really only have about two, possibly three, targets of their own that they could win where the Democrats have put eight Republican seats in play. You know, it's just a real contrast. I mean the Democrats really are very nervous about holding the Senate seat in Washington State and in Nebraska. Everywhere else they're sort of, you know, they're cautiously optimistic about holding in Minnesota. They feel okay about Maryland. They feel okay about Michigan. They feel okay about West Virginia. So they feel in much better shape than the Republicans.

On the House side, you know, the Democrats need to put somewhere between 50 and 60 House seats in play in order to get that magic number that they need of just 15. They have to figure out how to spread out the resources of the Republicans on defense in such a way that the financial and organizational advantage that the Republicans have institutionally is somehow diluted because they're spreading out and dealing with seats, having to play defense all around the country.

Right now they've probably realistically put about 40, 35 to 40 seats in play. They need to hope another 10 come into play. And I think the recruiting's been only okay. They've gotten good candidates in some places that they've should, but they've not done as well in recruiting some candidates in other states where they could have done better. Part of the problem they had is the Republicans really pushed this idea in 2005 that the map, the way we draw our congressional districts in this country made it impossible for Democrats to somehow win it back. And what that served to do -- and that story line kept getting written by the press, just kept written. Yeah, you know, gerrymandering. It's called gerrymandering. It's by a guy I think his name was Gerry Mander or something like that. But anyway, they said oh no, the way the map is done, it just can't be done. It can't be done. And so that deterred some candidates from actually deciding to run because they kept reading geez, we can't win this district. It's not easy. It's just too hard. Maybe this isn't the year. The fact is if you really looked at the map nationally, the country is divided up pretty evenly by congressional districts if you overlaid how these districts voted during the presidential election.

But Democrats still -- so the recruiting has only gone okay. They need 15. I can see how they get 10 seats. Once they get to 15, then it's something -- it's sort of -- my assumption is they get to 30. It's one of those where that last five seats, it's so on the borderline that if they're getting those, then that means everything is happening for them. It means it is sort of a mini-wave. So it's sort of one of those they probably won't win the House. But if they do, then they're going to have done it in a big way that there might not be a middle ground for them at that.

And frankly, that comes to a final point I want to make before we talk about questions, and that's do Democrats really want control of Congress in 2006? Because the scenarios I've outlined for you, I mean if they control Congress, they're barely going to control Congress, right? They're going to control Congress by small margins particularly in the Senate. If they get the Senate back, the best case scenario has them with a one seat majority.

Well, then suddenly comes the burden of governing. Suddenly comes the burden of compromising with President Bush. Suddenly it means they have to actually to start enacting some stuff. Then, you know, they have to keep their liberal wing happy. Maybe they -- do they start investigating the President? Do they create -- you know, you've heard Republicans trying to sort of scare some swing voters by saying boy, if you give the Democrats power, they're not going to declare war anymore, they're going to subpoena the terrorists and they're going to have these investigations and hearings and stuff like that.

And you know, how do the Democrats keep their liberal base, which does want to see those things, because secretly they just want payback for Clinton, or are they going to somehow figure out how to govern. And if they do that, end up making President Bush more popular. Because we saw what happened to President Clinton when suddenly he had to negotiate with the opposing party that controlled Congress. It actually made him more popular. He became the lone guy, and so any sort of bill that got signed, he got the credit even if it was a Republican bill.

So it's a -- there are some people, particularly maybe people that would like to see Hillary Clinton become President who secretly hope the Democrats just get really, really close, you know, they get eight or nine House seats. They get three or four Senate seats. They narrow the margins. The make Democrats feel good but not great and keep they hungrier and make 2008 the closest thing this country has ever really had to what I would say a European style election, which would be, you know, the party that wins is going to win everything. You know, control of everything would be on the line, the House, the Senate and the Presidency. If the margins narrow, as we all assume they narrow, but Democrats don't take control then it's -- 2008 already is looking like a big deal in this country, becomes that much bigger because it's all at stake. And it's probably one of those potentially realignment type elections, you know, w hat's at stake and the party that wins probably is going to be there for four to six to eight years, and that's a -- as if the 2008 election didn't need anymore hype, in this country it would really hype it up even greater.

I'm going to stop there and let you guys talk more about '06. If you want to talk about some '08, I'm happy to do that. But I kind of -- I think you guys wanted to make sure we narrow the focus to '06.

MODERATOR: We'll go to questions now. New York, if there's anyone there just step forward. Please wait for the mike and state your name.

QUESTION: Thank you. My name is Soma Schott, Radio Valera, Venezuela. I would like to know, for many people there is an increasing impact or influence of the Hispanic community in the U.S. and how this fact is going to affect the results of the next election. I would like to know how true is that, and how do you consider this is going to affect in any way the immigration debate.

CHUCK TODD: Well, I'm glad you brought up immigration because I didn't. Because one of the other important things that came out of that special election in California is that the Republicans, particularly House Republicans, the lesson they took from that, whether this is a correct lesson or not I'll let others decide, but the lesson they took from it was immigration -- being tough on immigrants and having being for the toughest possible immigration law and anti-amnesty is the ticket to getting conservatives back into the Republican fold and getting them excited about why they need to keep the House.

And it's clear to me, you know, yesterday the Republican House leadership announced that they were going to have hearings on the immigration bill before they have this compromise in the Senate in other states. So basically what they're saying is they're giving a roadmap to anti-immigrant forces and saying we're going to be in Arizona, we're going to be in Phoenix doing a hearing on this date, come out in force and give us your opinion. They're basically using this as a road show to show that hey, House Republicans are the ones standing up for amnesty -- against amnesty. Those Senate Republicans, you know, they're capitulating. They're not really tough on immigration.

The longer term effect is interesting. I've talked to a lot of Democratic strategists about this, and they don't -- they tried to do a lot of voter registration drives during these pro-immigration rallies that happened in Texas and Arizona and California about -- what as it about two months ago. And they had a hard time getting people to just -- sort of translating the anger that the Hispanic community over this to okay, now it means I want to get involved in politics. They haven't crossed that threshold yet.

I don't think that you're going to see a major -- you can see immigration in an anti-immigration flavor hurt Democrats in Arizona, hurt them individually maybe in a congressional race or two in that region, maybe even in the Midwest, in Iowa, where the -- the Midwest, it's interesting. The Midwest -- I grew up in Miami. We went through this immigration culture shock in the '70s and it was ugly. It was messy. There were riots at some times. And then Florida grew up. They sort of got used to it. And assimilation took place, cultural acceptance on all sides between Anglos, Hispanics, African-Americans, and it became a melting pot that is relatively not just peaceful but comfortable.

The Midwest is only now experiencing the influx of immigrants. And so this is a culture shock to the central part of -- and it may be 20 years before this debate is over in the Midwest because it's the first time they've been touched at it personally. The border states have all dealt with this. They've dealt with it and they've sort of moved on and particularly California, Texas and Florida. And I think it -- you look at President Bush's position and you can tell that that's somebody who grew up in Texas, who sort of is culturally comfortable with a melting pot population.

I think that if Hispanics -- if the Republican Party gets a little too -- and this is the fear of the White House -- gets a little too anti-immigrant and it look like it's anti-Mexican, comes across more that way than anything else, they could really be hurt in a Presidential election. You could see particularly certain states like Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona -- all four of them were states carried by President Bush, all have significant Hispanic populations.

Twelve years ago, the California Republican Party got aligned with an anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican sort of wing of a messaging sort of that happened due to a ballot initiative, and the Republicans haven't recovered in that state since. It's taken an Arnold Schwarzenegger to even give them a chance. That could happen. And if the Republican Party is not careful, and that's sort of why the President has stuck to his guns on this and he's not capitulating to the conservatives. Because Karl Rove knows the long-term problem for the Republican Party if they alienate Hispanics in big numbers, they would never be a majority party ever again.

QUESTION: Could you explain how the congressional map is drawn? You suggested that the way it is set hurt really Democrats. In what way?

CHUCK TODD: Every 10 years the country does a census. Then the numbers determine -- the census will say -- the Census Bureau will say, and right now I believe it's something approximately 800,000 -- they'll say there should be 800,000 residents in each congressional district. Then the state legislatures are, in most cases, sometimes it's different for some states -- then it's up to the state law to draw the boundaries. So they'll tell the State of Florida, for instance, you get 25 congressional districts. You decide how you're going to draw them. You know, there's some constitutional tests that they have to pass, but it's pretty loose. And then they will decide how they draw them, where they number them, all this stuff. And in the case like Florida, it's done by the state legislature and it's done by a small committee, and they literally -- if the Republicans are in charge of that state legislature, well, they're going to try to draw a map that gives the Republicans the best chance at winning the most seats that they can.

And if the Democrats are in charge in a certain state, it works exactly the same way where the Democrats try to draw a map. A few states actually force a commission that's bipartisan or nonpartisan to draw it. And it's funny. The few states that do it that way are Iowa, Arizona, and those districts are a lot of times the most competitive in the country. At least they're usually drawn more competitively.

They'll do certain things -- 20 years ago in the south, Republicans drew a bunch of congressional districts that put all the African-Americans in one district, in as few districts as possible, and it made them some very hefty Democratic districts, but it took Democrats out of other districts that made those districts much less competitive and suddenly that led -- that's how Republicans swept the south. That's how suddenly they went from controlling half the districts in the south to 75, 80 percent of the districts in the south.

So there's different things you can do to -- you know, who's in charge of drawing the map is -- and that's why these elections particularly in the states become so important on a federal level, because who controls the states at the time of the census every 10 years is who's going to -- you have a good chance of knowing who's going to control Congress. I hope that helped. It's not an easy system.

QUESTION: Finland. How much money will the parties raise and use in this election or will they save some for the all important '08?

CHUCK TODD: Oh, there's no saving money anymore. Because it's interesting, the assumption is -- the thing that the 2004 election taught both parties is that they think there's a bottomless pit of money. They do not -- there is no such thing as a budget. There is not such thing as saving anything. Both parties believe that there is always more money that they can find, so they'll spend it as fast as it comes in.

I think, you know, roughly it's fair to say -- politics is a multi-billion dollar industry in this country. If approximately $5 billion was spent on the 2004 election, that means we're probably going to see anywhere from $2 to $3 billion overall spent on these midterms. And you know, don't assume the Republicans will outspend the Democrats. The Democrats have resources like labor unions. While, you know, on the face of it you'll see these numbers come from the official political party committees that show Republicans with a little more money than the Democrats. But you have all these third-party interest groups and the Democrats have more of them, particularly labor unions, that contribute. I think this year labor will probably account for anywhere from $80 to $150 million of just money that they will flood into the state parties, money that we don't ever calculate here. Sometimes we only calculate just the national party and we forget there are a hundred other arms, 50 other arms in each party of both -- of the Democratic and Republican parties in all the 50 states, which in each one of those states raises millions. So I think it'll be a $2 to $3 billion election cycle.

QUESTION: Thank you. Mounzer Sleiman with Almustaqbal Alarabi. I have two parts questions. In your assessment, kind of -- you did not count on the situation in Iraq in Afghanistan, Somalia, et cetera. The issue of war on terrorism in general, it's true that in the last week there was some positive things or things could be spinned in the direction of the Republican Party. But the situation is not improving in all area of war on terrorism. So if this continue, how it's going to impact the election? Second, it's a hypothetical situation, but it could affect the election. Let's assume that the vice president for health reason or other consideration, did not want to continue to be the vice president and there was a selection of another one. How that -- the other one who most likely will be and how will we impact that election, too?

MR. TODD: Well, let me start with the first one. Look, I think the Republicans are gambling a great deal by making this decision to go all in on Iraq; that they've decided that, okay, we're going to make this election about Iraq. And in fact we're only going to make this selection about the war. Now they won't say the words "Iraq", they say war on terror. And that is that -- I mean, they believe if they get the public talking about war on terror, that they think that somehow that the voter thinks about those two issues a little bit differently. You know, they know things are going well in Iraq, but they might say, well, jeez, Iraq. If people view Iraq as part of the war on terror, then the Republicans feel like they have a chance at that person's vote. If somebody views Iraq as a distraction from the war on terror, they don't have that person's vote. And that's ultimately, that's ultimately the line -- message battle, right, which is Iraq part of the war on terror?

The Democrats have lost that message battle for four years now. They keep trying. They kept trying to say that it wasn't and they didn't -- they didn't get there, they didn't successfully -- successfully able to split that up. I think the voters are losing patience on Iraq.

If you look at the history of, I would encourage you to go to Gallup.com, look at the Gallup poll numbers over a four-year, five-year, six-year span on Vietnam and over the -- now since the war on Iraq, and you can see it's so hard to recover from the negative. It's so hard how they're going to get out of this, how they're going to somehow prop Iraq numbers up, how somehow they're going to get the public to change their opinion on Iraq because every time they get, you know, one piece of good news with Zarqawi, then there's footage of a soldier being mutilated or there's a kidnapping. And I just don't see how they're going to -- ultimately, the pictures that come out of Iraq have never been positive and, you know, the Republicans have successfully always said, well, jeez, the media is only covering the negative. But you know, I think that -- that's why I think this is gamble of a strategy. I think that in the fall, that if thise election is about Iraq and somehow the Republicans keep control of Congress, the Democrats ought to think about another line of business, to be honest.

As for Cheney, you know, it's funny. This rumor doesn't come up as much anymore as it used to. The problem is if it does happen, well then who Bush chooses immediately would be seen as the front -- that means he's trying to decide who his heir is. I think Cheney is pretty stubborn and he's not going anywhere. And I think you'd have a hard time getting rid of him and Bush doesn't do this. This is not the way he works, you know. I mean, it would have to really fail. I mean, I don't think it would be a wink and a nod failure. You know, that's always where this sort of, you know, everyone's well, jeez, you know, oh, he might have heart problems. Well, one could argue he has heart problems right now. You know, he -- at any moment.

So you know, it would certainly mean that whoever Bush picked automatically becomes the frontrunner for 2008. And a lot of factors how popular would Bush be in the polls if he's really low. Does he pick McCain to try to boost himself up? Or, you know, everybody would say what about Condi Rice. I mean, it would certainly completely, you know, this town has never gone through that vice presidential selection process under those circumstances. It would be a feeding frenzy. I would personally enjoy it, but it would be crazy. It would certainly soak everything up.

MODERATOR: We have about ten minutes, so one-part questions, please. Japan, did you have a question?

MR. TODD: I'll try to be shorter with my answers.

QUESTION: Ignasi Abad from Catalunya Radio, Spain. Why are there so few competitive seats in the House and in the Senate? Why is so many incumbents regain their seats?

MR. TODD: Well, part of it is this -- the way the lines are drawn. There's a lot of seats that are just viewed as not competitive. Some of that is true and some of that is just poor recruiting. But frankly, you know, if 70 seats went into play, while that might not seem like a lot out of 435, historically for us that is a lot. So you know, right now, there are more seats in play this cycle than there have been for the last four in a row. So you know, while in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't seem like a lot an argument can be made that more are viewed competitively now than have been in nearly a decade, particularly really not since the last -- not since '94 or the last time that there was a switch.

QUESTION: Christoph Marschall from Berlin, Germany. You mentioned already Iraq. We talked about immigration. What other subjects would be good for a litmus test or for an emotional subject and if there are other regional differences that might be true for, let's say, New England is not true for the Middle West and so on? But it's amazing for somebody from abroad that Iraq can be the main subject of such an election in Germany. You vote after your (inaudible), not after foreign policy.

MR. TODD: Right. Well, I do think that this is a nationalized election environment, okay, and that most voters when they think of their vote for Congress, are thinking of it in terms of national issues. So Iraq is the overriding issue. Then immigration is certainly an issue amongst Republicans right now, not necessarily convinced that this is one that the middle or the left is as interested in.

You asked for regional ones. Well, there's stuff like -- I don't know if you remember the Terri Schiavo thing, the right to die battle. In the state of Florida, that's going to be a major issue and in the Pennsylvania Senate race. That's going to be an issue that comes up because the Republican there, Rick Santorum, played a high-profile role in that and the Democrats believe that Republicans are vulnerable on that issue in places where people remember that, you know, because that was that first sign of like -- of Democrats being able to say this is what Republican control, you know, see -- they're not for less government. They're for more government, you know, it was that first time the Democrats could successfully make themselves look like the anti-government party and make the Republicans look pro-government.

Beyond that, I think that there really, you know, there's going to be some places where the economy is a major issue, a Missouri Senate race, stem cell research. There's a ballot initiative in Missouri about whether to make embryonic stem cell research something state-subsidized embryonic stem cell research allowed. That's going to play as an issue in that race and possibly Democrats think that that's a wedge issue a little bit, in South Dakota, abortion. And it's a -- but really, this is a one giant issue election Iraq, a subset being immigration and then, you know, Democrats would like to talk about healthcare, would like to talk about prescription drugs, but I don't think that they're going to have success talking about much else.

QUESTION: Adrienne Woltersdorf from the Tageszeitung. Can you please outline. I'm not sure. What do you think are the biggest internal problems of the Democratic Party? Is it leadership or is it a lack of people who are willing to do this hard job? Could you please describe this?

MR. TODD: Well, to say it in a nutshell, is tough because there are going to be entire books written about this issue. Look, the short answer is they have no -- there's no one person in charge. There's no one person to rally around. Anytime a party is completely in the minority, then there's no one leader. The minute they get a nominee for President in 2008, it'll seem like, oh, wow, the Democrats have found their footing, you know, because at the end of the day, your nominee for President is the voice of your party.

I think the bigger problem the Democrats have gone through is they haven't recovered from Clinton. And I say that not in a negative or a positive but, you know, the Republicans, it took them a long time to get over Ronald Reagan. You know, it just took them a long time to become something, a party that wasn't just, you know, trying to just imitate Reagan, imitate Reagan. The Democrats are still in this, you know, and because the Clintons are still sort of around, right, he's not being put out to pasture, because we've got Mrs. Clinton vying to be the leader of the party. So I think that that is a bit of a problem for the party, that they have sort of this Clinton hangover that's lingering, that's going to stay with them for a very long time and they haven't figured out how to get out of being defined by the Clintons. And then, when they have a nominee, I think that will change. I think it changed for a short period of time when Kerry was a nominee. Now Kerry wasn't a very good one. He wasn't very good with staying on message and giving the party something to be for. But I think their next nominee will. It's inevitable, particularly since you're not running against an incumbent President, but it will be an open seat. So the party will get to stand for -- on its own, rather than to create a message that's just anti- the incumbent.

QUESTION: Hi, there. Matt Silverstein with Eurovision. To kind of piggyback on that, how is Howard Dean doing? He was obviously internationally covered. Should he be out there more in these races or should he be out there less? He kind of can irk a lot of constituents.

MR. TODD: Yeah. You know, it's funny. I don't think Howard Dean understands what the chairmanship of the DNC should be. And he's -- now, I think he really -- he's doing the job of what a normal DNC chair does, right, which is operational, raise money, try to build the party, try to fix some of the problems in the party structure, which right now are in the states. But I think he took the job thinking he would be the voice of the Democratic Party. And I think he quickly realized Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid weren't going to allow it and the Clintons weren't going to allow it, that he was just not going to be the voice of the party. And he dutifully said fine, okay, I'm going to go do my project over here, do this 50 state thing, keep my constituents happy. His constituents are the guys that run the state parties. And I think the jury's out. Look, if they win the -- if Democrats win the 2008 election and carry a couple of states that they've not carried in a long time, then Howard Dean's chairmanship was a success. We're not going to know this time; it's too soon too judge.

QUESTION: Sam Youngman, the Asahi Shimbun. Given the limited amount of money that is out there, in a bottomless pit, as you said, is a 50-state strategy realistic? I mean, have the DCCC and the DSCC been left to fend for themselves?

MR. TODD: The problem is and I actually am a little defensive of Dean on this one because the Republicans actually do view their party as a 50-state party and they invest and they try to win some major election in every state. They try to be competitive, whether it's Massachusetts where they, you know, have decided that the one place they're always going to be competitive is in a governor's race or it's Rhode Island where they have the governorship, yet it's a state that's 65 percent Democratic or even Hawaii, a state that has voted Democratic forever and yet has a Republican governor.

So the Republicans have sort of always taken a 50-state view and the Democrats haven't. You know, there've always been targeted, targeted strikes. You know, it started in '92 because of Perot at the time and it was a three-way presidential so everything had to be just sort of targeted and they decided, okay, you know, we're going to put together a puzzle here and try to make this work. The problem is, yes, they have a chance at winning it back now. And then Dean's argument back is well, okay, I give you this money and then yet I'm starving the Nebraska party yet again. And you know what, we're not going to win that state legislative race in Grand Platte, Nebraska. And you know, now -- you know, and in 15 years that could have meant, now maybe that guy was going to be the next Governor for Nebraska.

You know, there is an argument to be made that what the Republicans set out to do when they won the -- basically, they said okay, we're going to be a presidential party in the '70s and '80s. And then you had guys like Newt Gingrich who started a little thing called GOPAC and said we're going to build within the states literally from the ground up and win some state legislative races. The Christian Coalition started in school boards. People -- I mean, they try to win school board races. So that was -- I mean, so Dean is trying to follow the Republican model. I'm not sure it's going work, but you know, he needs more than one cycle to be judged.

MODERATOR: One last question. Yeah, Tim.

QUESTION: Hi. It's Tim Harper from the Toronto Star. Just quickly, could I ask you about Joe Lieberman and the primary and whether that battle, which is focused on the war position obviously, plays larger in the Democratic Party or is it a battle that's going to be confined to Connecticut?

MR. TODD: I think the Democrats better hope it's a battle confined to Connecticut. I think this is a very -- you know, the primary's in August. I do feel like that where we stand now is where we're -- nationally, is where things will stand on Labor Day, right, and that our half-time entertainment is going to be this Connecticut Democratic primary.

That said, how I could very easily see the Republicans being able to nationally take that primary result if Ned Lamont wins and be able to say -- and be able to say, look, the Democrat -- and try to figure out a way to marginalize the Democrats, be able to say, look, the Democratic Party's been taken over by these left wing, antiwar bloggers and they're pushing out -- and that they will -- and they will trot Lieberman out as this, you know, abandoned soul in the middle, the Democrats are abandoning the middle of the country and to be able to send a message like that. I think the Democrats nationally better be very careful how what message is sent if Lieberman does lose the primary. Everything I hear is that he could lose. Lieberman people think they're going to lose. I mean, and they worry that they could lose, so obviously don't think they're going to lose, but they're worried.

The public polling is better for them than their own private polling. So they're incredibly nervous. And I don't know if Lieberman can win a three-way. That's the other thing is I don't know if he decides to run as in independent and all this stuff. But it complicates a lot of things. You know, the Democrats have three House districts in Connecticut that they'd like to win, three districts that John Kerry carried that Republicans hold in Congress. All of a sudden, those guys are trying to distance themselves from Bush. They can say, well, "We're Joe Lieberman supporters," you know. The can show themselves as supporting a Democrat.

This Connecticut thing could end up become -- spiraling out of control and turning into a national story that makes their Democrats look like they have the smaller tent. You know, you always hear that big tent party and both parties are trying to advertise as their big tent. You could see how the Republicans could frame a message that says, look, the Democrats are small tent. They just kicked out their nominee for vice president from six years ago. Be pretty remarkable thing.

MODERATOR: Thanks. Thanks very much.

MR. TODD: You got us.