DCCC Whistling Past Its November Next Graveyard?

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has a convincing argument for why it will retain control of the House by the arcane arithmetic of the inside-the-beltway know-it-alls like Bob Shrum, but one Dem begs to differ:

The DCCC certainly has history on its side, but polls in modern times also have never shown Republicans with as large a lead in generic ballot contests for the House. What's more, though the memo makes a persuasive case on several points, much of its thinking on the Tea Party is happy talk.

The DCCC argues the Tea Party is a huge liability for the GOP because it has resulted in the nomination of extreme candidates who can't win, forced candidates to take radical positions and fueled the presence of some 100 third-party candidacies that will drain support from the GOP nominee. However, Bill Galston, a former deputy domestic policy adviser to President Clinton, begs to differ. He argues in the New Republic that voters more closely identify with the Tea Party than liberals acknowledge, which could mean a surprise in November.

He points to a new survey from the Pew Center that asked voters to position themselves in relation to the two parties. "Voters now place themselves much closer to the Republican Party than to the Democratic Party on this left-right continuum," Mr. Galston writes. "And, startlingly, the electorate places itself a bit closer to the Tea Party movement (which is well to the right of the Republican Party) than to the Democratic Party. All this represents a major shift from five years ago, when mean voters placed themselves exactly halfway between their ideological perceptions of the Democratic and Republican parties."

Galston correctly predicted the Repub victory in 1994 when working in the Clinton WH, but he should also have included the victory of the National League in the All Star Game this year, which always means huge Republican gains in an election year!