The '04 parallel is most significant when it comes to the GOP race and its front-runner, Mitt Romney. While Romney remains deeply vulnerable within his party, he enjoys sizable advantages in money, name recognition, electability and plain charisma that will be difficult for his foes to overcome. This is especially true if, as expected, Rick Perry soon enters the race and splits key conservative segments with Michele Bachmann. If Romney continues running a smart campaign, he should win the nomination.

If he does, this would be cause for concern for Democrats, because Romney is the GOP’s best choice for the general election. As the party's most disciplined and telegenic option, he would give President Obama big headaches, as national and swing state polling already suggests. As Nate Silver wrote last week, an Obama-Romney race looks now to be a toss-up.

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But when it comes to his political future, Weiner has a more immediate problem: He could find himself without a congressional district next year.

Because of stagnant population growth in the most recent census, New York will lose two of its 29 seats in the House of Representatives through the reapportionment process that will precede the 2012 elections. For some time, Democrats in Albany had planned to draw favorable new lines that eliminated exclusively GOP seats, but their narrow loss of the state Senate last November scuttled plans for a harsh gerrymander. Consequently, it is a near-certainty that the final map will eliminate one Democratic and Republican seat.

While there are theoretically 20 Democratic seats to choose from, legal and geographic considerations severely limit the number that might actually be targeted, and Weiner‘s Brooklyn/Queens-based 9th District is among the few that could be at risk.

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Yes, trying to predict the electoral outcomes a year ahead of time can be a fool's errand, but it's not hard to see the opening for Mitch Daniels: The GOP field is deeply flawed -- the most prominent "candidate" at the moment seems to be a reality show host who's become obsessed with birtherism -- and deathly stale, littered with dried-out pols. Daniels, by contrast, would be a genuinely fresh face on the national stage and would combine the appeal of an outsider -- he was overwhelmingly reelected in Indiana in 2008, even as President Obama carried the state -- with the savvy of a D.C. insider (which he was during the first part of George W. Bush's administration).

Daniels has been coy about his intentions so far, but his potential strength on the GOP side is made clear in part by a simple process of elimination.

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The Post was smart to play up the likelihood of a primary battle; Allen would only be the latest prominent conservative to be targeted for supposed ideological impurity in this Tea Party era. But there's a bigger problem with Allen's comeback attempt, one that goes far beyond his own party's base: He is fundamentally a creature of Virginia's political past -- to the point that he would have a difficult time reclaiming his seat despite Webb’s currently weak poll numbers.

Before his infamous meltdown in '06, which was triggered by his infamous "macaca" moment (and also by Michael Scherer's report here at Salon about Allen's use of the n-word as a collegian). Allen had earned recognition as a shrewd politician, an up-and-comer who had won the three major races of his career in resounding fashion: for a seat in Congress in 1991, for governor in 1993, and for the Senate in 2000 (by defeating two-term incumbent Charles Robb).

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Moreover, the sweeping gains Republicans posted in gubernatorial and state legislative races last month will give them control of the map-making process in virtually every key malleable state. In other words, the GOP could be positioned to use redistricting to cement its new majority in the House for years to come.

If Republicans do decide to mount a concerted push to radically redraw congressional maps in their favor, they could potentially squeeze out an impressive number of new seats. But they could also be stopped in their tracks -- if the Obama administration is willing to use the Voting Rights Act to fight them.

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While Democrats’ historic loss of at least 61 seats (results are still pending in a handful of districts) can be traced to a diverse set of factors, the majority of the Democrats defeated were either elected to Republican-friendly seats in the wave elections of 2006 and 2008 or were long-term incumbents who represented heavily GOP districts. The seats in that latter category are likely gone for good, while many in the former are clustered in a handful of states where GOP state-level gains will ensure that they are fortified in next year’s redistricting trials, making them even more difficult for Democrats to take back than they were entering the '06 and '08 cycles.

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The prospect of losses in these states magnifies the importance to Democrats of the race for Barack Obama's old Senate seat in Illinois. Lose it, and they just might lose the Senate. Given this reality, it's likely that a frustratingly unfulfilled opportunity is dancing through some Democrats' minds these days: What if Lisa had run?

That would be Lisa Madigan, Illinois' popular attorney general, whose refusal to run has left Democrats with a mediocre nominee who is in grave danger of losing the seat.

Entering this cycle, it seemed unthinkable that Obama’s seat might actually be in play. Despite expectations that the midterms would cut into the Democrats’ 2006 and 2008 gains, the general feeling was that Obama’s seat would be a national exception to any Republican tide.

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"I think it's premature to say that John Boehner's going to be speaker of the House," Obama replied.

Maybe it is. But it's an outcome Obama should be hoping for. Sure, a GOP House could mean endless investigations and subpoenas, but it would also give the president a better chance at winning a second term in 2012.

Most observers agree that Obama's reelection will depend on the movement of the economy over the next two years. If it roars back, Obama will benefit politically, even if the improvement is not directly traceable to his policies. And if it continues to stagnate or worsens, he’ll be another Jimmy Carter. Fair or unfair, captaincy of the government gives a party ownership of the economy, particularly during recessions. Just ask the Republicans of 1982.

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Texas, where Democrats have been struggling for years to wage competitive campaigns, may seem like an unlikely battleground, especially in the climate of 2010. Today, not a single one of its statewide offices is occupied by a Democrat, and Democrats haven't won a U.S. Senate seat or the governorship in the last 20 years. The party's institutional failures have been all too apparent as its candidates have endured repeated embarrassing beatings in races initially seen as winnable.

Rick Perry exemplifies Democrats’ frustrations in Texas. Ascending to the governorship in 2000 (when George W. Bush left to become president), Perry has proven resilient despite some shaky poll numbers. Cultivating an image of something of a Texas Marlboro Man -- a label fashioned by Newsweek -- Perry’s hissing rhetoric against Democrats, his happy rejection of federal stimulus money, and his musings that Texas could secede have made him a conservative darling while earning him the enmity of liberals and many moderates.

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Whoops.

It now appears that the underfunded Miller may have actually toppled Murkowki in what would be the most stunning upset of this entire election cycle. While complete results will take weeks to compile as some remote Alaska communities and villages release their numbers and outstanding absentees and provisional ballots are tabulated, Murkowski will have a difficult time overcoming Miller’s current lead, which stood at more than 2,000 votes with about 98% of precincts reporting.

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The piece, which ran in Monday's Montgomery Advertiser, is framed as a principled critique of Sparks, the state's agriculture commissioner. But Davis’ words drip with disdain and lingering bitterness, providing a pathetic and potentially final note to a political career that was once noted for its fast ascendance and seemingly limitless potential.

In withholding his support for Sparks, of course, Davis is essentially endorsing the Republican nominee, Robert Bentley. But in the Op-Ed, Davis attacks Sparks for his opposition to charter schools, while ignoring Bentley’s similar stance. He also comically concedes that there's "no evidence that Sparks is corrupt" -- but then questions Sparks’ integrity. And he whines about "smears" supposedly perpetrated by Sparks' camp in the primary, while leaving out any mention of the highly negative campaign that Davis himself waged to win his House seat back in 2002.

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In thinking about how Democrats could improve their increasingly grim November outlook, the iconic 1973 cover of National Lampoon magazine -- in which a hand holds a revolver up to a worried-looking dog beside a caption threatening the reader to buy the current issue or else -- comes to mind.

In fact, it seems the White House may be embracing this thinking. Both Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, and David Plouffe, Obama's old campaign manager, have recently stated that a new Republican majority is possible. While their comments were immediately assailed by the party's House leadership, they actually revealed a shrewd strategy: pushing the panic button to spur unengaged Democrats to counter the flood of Republican-leaning voters expected in November.

This may be Democrats’ best hope of salvaging a respectable showing in a brutal electoral cycle -- and staving off another 1994.

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Something tells me that the same NOTA option would fare quite well in Illinois this year, where the two major U.S. Senate candidates, Democrat Alexi Giannoulias and Republican Mark Kirk, continue to find new and ever-more-pitiful ways to distinguish themselves for all the wrong reasons.

Elected as Illinois' state treasurer in 2006 at the age of 30, Giannoulias captured the Democratic Senate nod only after Lisa Madigan, the state's popular attorney general, refused to run and in large part because of his perceived closeness to Barack Obama, with whom he used to regularly play pickup basketball.

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This is not a novel argument. Since 1987, when Robert Bork failed to gain confirmation in large part because he was too candid in expressing his views, nominees have become completely closed in discussing their opinions. After Bork, White House teams decided they could gain nothing from tapping individuals who might invite a hint of controversy. The result has been a stream of milquetoast, clam-mouthed nominees and, minus the Clarence Thomas saga, completely unmemorable hearings.

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What he does in the coming weeks will go a long way toward determining if that happens.

In Tuesday's GOP primary, Republicans nominated Sharron Angle, a former state assemblywoman who can be fairly characterized as a fringe candidate with a history of electoral failure. Angle rose from the basement in polls to a commanding lead in the final weeks with grass-roots and financial backing from conservative groups and an epic collapse by the original front-runner, Sue Lowden.

But Angle’s rise was boosted significantly by the work of Reid, whose surrogates pledged to "vaporize" Lowden’s candidacy and then did just that, using television ads and free media to draw attention to her suggestion that Americans try to barter for their healthcare. This cost Lowden her credibility and made her vulnerable to Angle.

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Three of this year's Senate contests are poised to test the durability of this rightward movement, with the fates of Marco Rubio in Florida, Rand Paul in Kentucky and (assuming she wins Tuesday's GOP primary) Sharron Angle in Nevada set to provide a clear indicator of whether going hard right is a viable electoral strategy.

This trio has two things in common. First, they're all Tea Party favorites who have toppled (or are poised to topple, in Angle's case) GOP establishment favorites. And second, because of their arch-conservatism, they are — at least on paper — less electable than the more mainline Republicans they vanquished.

Given the climate of 2010, Republicans were staring at near-certain victories in Florida, Kentucky and Nevada. But with Rubio, Paul and Angle, these states will essentially be toss-ups.

Nominating them amounts to a high-risk electoral strategy.

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It's notoriously difficult to predict the outcome of congressional elections, which are draped in mystery, with members intensely skittish about discussing internal matters in public. Personal relationships -- friendships and grudges -- that are invisible to or misunderstood by the public also loom large.

Still, it's not impossible to handicap the Schumer-Durbin race. There are four major factors that should be crucial in determining the winner:

Freshmen allegiances. Chuck Schumer’s best asset may be his personal connection to the 17 members elected in the last two 2008 and 2006 election cycles, when he was running the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. After this year's elections, these freshmen should make up nearly one-third of the Democratic caucus.

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This year, Democrats could be positioned to engineer a different switch, this time in Florida, where the presumptive Democratic nominee, Rep. Kendrick Meek, has fallen far behind in a three-way race with Republican Marco Rubio and independent Charlie Crist. Democrats could use the same direct, high-level pressure that forced Torricelli's hand to usher out Meek in favor of Crist’s independent bid -- a move that would give Democrats their best chance of knocking off Rubio. 

To be sure, the circumstances in Florida this year aren't quite what they were in New Jersey in '02. Unlike Torricelli, Meek is not weighted down by immense baggage. And the four-term congressman has deep ties to the national party (he's one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's favorites), not to mention a solidly liberal record pleasing to the Democratic base.

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Of the 161 active circuit judges today, just 65 were appointed by Democratic presidents, and their average age is 65 years old. Excluding the seven judges nominated by Obama and confirmed in the last year, there are no Democratic-appointed circuit judges under the age of 55.

This complicates Obama’s decision. To put it bluntly, too many of the Democrats’ best-credentialed jurists would be too old to carve out a meaningful legacy if picked to succeed Stevens.

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The freshness test, developed by National Journal writer Jonathan Rauch, posits that “no one has been elected president who took more than 14 years to climb from his first major elective office to election as either president or vice president.”

Lyndon Baines Johnson — elected to the vice presidency in 1960, 23 years after winning his first campaign for the U.S. House — is the only modern president to defy it. All the others have climbed the ladder faster — sometimes much faster. Barack Obama, for instance, won the White House just four years after claiming a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. Bill Clinton, who was elected president 14 years after winning his first term as governor of Arkansas, took longer — but still met the freshness test.

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