How big will Democratic gains be this fall?

Rothenberg: Musgrave, Kuhl in New York, Robin Hayes in North Carolina. The Phil English race in Pennsylvania is a good example of someone who's been relatively safe over the years. I can remember when I first came to Washington, we always paid attention to Phil English in that northwestern Pennsylvania congressional district, Erie stretching south, but over the past decade that we've pretty much taken it for granted that Phil English was going to be reelected. He's got a real race this time.

Schaller: In 2006, we had Heath Shuler, sort of a celebrity, former University of Tennessee and not-so-great Redskins quarterback: ran and won as a Democratic freshman from North Carolina. And then George Clooney's dad ran and lost in Kentucky before that. And of course we've had former actors and former football players run for Congress in many elections. Are there any interesting biographies out there, people who are not incumbents obviously, as congressional candidates this cycle?

Sahd: In Alabama's 5th District, there's an open seat, where state Sen. Parker Griffith is running to take over the district of Bud Cramer, who's retiring. He's another one of those socially conservative Democrats. He's a state senator but he's also a funeral director.

Wasserman: I would add that on top of being a funeral director, he's also an oncologist and has his own radio station, so talk about a jack-of-all-trades. He could add Congress to his résumé and it'd be on the second or third page. If you had to take a look at some really interesting biographies, I'd pick out perhaps a couple Democrats with stories to tell, such as Ashwin Madia in Minnesota's open 3rd District, who is only 30, I believe, and came back from Iraq and is formerly a Republican and served as the president of the student body at the University of Minnesota. His parents came to America with, I think he said, $19 in their pocket. It's a sort of a by-the-bootstraps story, but he's someone with a profile that's compelling.

Schaller: Where is his family from, what's his ethnic background?

Wasserman: He's Indian. And he's a Democrat. And then if you head to Illinois' 8th District, there's a candidate on the Republican side. Steven Greenberg is a Jewish former minor-league hockey player who's running, and his campaign has sort of stalled for the last couple months, but if he gets his act together and decides that he wants to contribute a lot of his own money into the race, he could still make things interesting. But I think a lot of people have already written off that contest.

Rothenberg: I think the two general categories we're seeing are lots of repeat candidates, so on the Republican side you have John Gard in Wisconsin, you have Melissa Hart in Pennsylvania 4. And on the Democratic side, my goodness, we've got a lot of people who have run before, whether it's Mary Jo Kilroy in the open seat in Ohio or Darcy Burner in Washington. And then you have a number of mayors and state legislators, which leads me to the second category: Democrats are making a major effort with this one profile of socially moderate candidates who are trying to inoculate themselves against charges that they're too liberal, too far left. They're running as cultural moderates. Pro-guns, often pro-life, but at least not easily identifiable as knee-jerk liberals. I think the Democrats have done a really good job recruiting those kind of candidates too.

Schaller: Let's move on and talk about two candidates who everybody knows about, the presidential nominees. One of you alluded earlier to Colorado about potential down-ballot effects. Obviously, the presidential race isn't really run in all 50 states. How much of an effect, down ballot, will either Barack Obama or John McCain have, if they do have one, and what will that effect be?

Wasserman: I think that's the $64 million question of congressional elections this year. If we take a look at sort of the localized effects that the presidential race could have, there are places in a lot of districts where Democrats are going to have to perform better than Barack Obama if they want to win, including a lot of freshman Democrats. I think a challenge for them is really going to be walking that tightrope and negotiating their support for the Democratic nominee with the needs of their own district and the desires of their constituents. In some other places, the likelihood of a Barack Obama wave really puts Republican incumbents in danger. As we get closer to the election, we can expect the races in Illinois 10, Mark Kirk, Connecticut 4, Chris Shays, and some other districts, to really more closely track the standing of the presidential election in those districts. I think those races are likely to tighten, and those Republican incumbents will need to outperform John McCain by say 5 points in order to survive, which is something that is not impossible for them to do, but it's still going to require a serious effort.

Rothenberg: I don't think it's a question of Barack Obama helping the Democrats, as much as other Democrats will benefit from the same mood and environment that is fueling Obama's candidacy. Those two things are very different. For example, just to cite the two examples David just mentioned, the Chris Shays and Mark Kirk seats, it's not as if voters in those two districts -- and let's point out those are two of the most upscale, affluent, educated imaginable in the country -- it's not as if those voters are so silly and lightheaded that they will simply say, "I'm voting for Barack Obama, so I have to vote for the Democrat." But they may say, "We really need change here. And while I like Chris Shays, or I like Mark Kirk -- I think they've done a pretty good job -- we just have to sweep Washington clean." It could happen again, given additional turnout in these districts. Casual voters -- casual voters are more likely to be mood voters. Maybe they'll get all happed up about Obama. They'll come out and say, "We want change," and that will hurt the Republicans.

But let's remind ourselves, we don't have a lot of indication of Republican voters defecting from Republican candidates. It didn't happen in 2006. It did happen in some of these specials, but as we argued, they are unique cases. Until we get closer to November, I'm hesitant to speculate. I really don't think it's the top-of-the-ticket candidate who will benefit the down-ballot candidates so much as the mood that's benefiting the Democrats at the top of ticket will also benefit down-ballot candidates.

Sahd: I agree, but I think if there are places where Barack Obama doesn't play well -- Pennsylvania, or some of those places where Hillary Clinton did well -- I think this is where the Democratic fundraising edge comes in, because they already have a good organization up. They have their own get-out-the-vote operations that are independent of these coordinated campaigns that Barack Obama is running in these places where he's likely to do very well. They're well set up in some of these places where he's not quite as popular and most likely won't bring out the demographics he's suggested in other places. That's where their money edge comes in.

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