Are things really better than before for Democrats?

On Sunday there was an article in the Washington Post about how the Democrats are seen as likely to win control of the House of Representatives, and it said that there are more Republican seats in play than there have been before. The article was written by Dan Balz and David Broder, and its interesting that they write that the Democrats are likely to gain without listing the seats that they are most likely to win this November. They have to win 15 more seats to win control, and about 20-25 more if they want to be sure of retaining control until at least 2010. Remember that the Democrats can win control by winning only seats in the northeast and midwest, but those are areas of declining population and its likely many of those seats will be eliminated at the time of the next census. According to the article, Republican strategists have admitted in private that they are unlikely to retain control of the House of Representatives after the election, and one even said that there is a "9 in 10" chance that they wouldn't.

They have seen the internal polling, and I have not, and that's certainly bad news if this is truly their assessment. However, I maintain that the Democrats still have an uphill battle this November in actually winning control of the House, and especially in retaining control over a long period of time. If they gain 15 seats they win control, but remember that its entirely possible that if they have a one seat majority that they could lose it in 2008 if the Republican candidate runs well in the Presidential election. If the Democratic Party is in a situation where 218-220 seats is the best that they can do then they are in trouble because the Republicans would be starting out with built-in advantages.

Anyway, here are the seats that I think are key for Democrats this November if they want to win control--

1. Iowa 1st (open seat)
2. Colorado 7th (open seat)
3. Arizona 8th (open seat)
4. Illinois 6th (open seat)
5. North Carolina 11th (Charles Taylor)
6. Indiana 9th (Mike Sodrel)
7. Texas 22nd (open seat)
8. Kentucky 4th (Geoff Davis)
9. Indiana 8th (John Hostettler)
10. New Mexico 1st (Heather Wilson)
11. Ohio 18th (open seat)
12. Pennsylvania 6th (Jim Gerlach)
13. Connecticut 4th (Christopher Shays)
14. Minnesota 6th (open seat)
15. New York 24th (open seat)

These are in my opinion the easiest 15 seats for the Democrats to gain if they want to win control of the House this November, and there are many of them, like New Mexico's 1st district, that they pretty much have to win. Right now Heather Wilson is in a deadlock with Patricia Madrid, although Wilson does have a lead within the margin of error. The one silver lining for Republicans is that in the individual races, the Democrats just have not been able to open up big leads, except in seats like the 9th district of Indiana, where Mike Sodrel defeated Democrat Baron Hill by a few hundred votes in 2004, and Hill is coming back to try again this year.

I will discuss this more later.