Tomorrow's Media Spin Today: Are the 2010 Elections 'Anti-Incumbent,' 'Anti-Liberal,' or 'Anti-Democrat'?

Via Real Clear Politics comes this excellent bit of analysis:

Almost all election analysts now agree that 2010 will not be a good year for Democrats. The latest RCP Averages for the major Senate races show Republicans picking up 7 Senate seats (down from 8 one month ago). This is a striking reversal from the early months of Obama’s presidency, when most forecasters were predicting Democratic gains.

The House has shown similar movement. Early in the cycle, pundits predicted sunny days for the Democrats in November of 2010, with beltway forecasters like Charlie Cook (“Obama’s Democrats are heading down a track much closer to 1934’s [when they picked up seats]”) and Stu Rothenberg (“[T]he chance of Republicans winning control of either chamber in the 2010 midterm elections is zero”) arguing that major GOP gains were close to impossible. Today it is a different story, and Cook now believes that it is hard to see how Democrats keep the House, while Rothenberg sees a 25-30 seat pickup (with gains in excess of 40 seats possible). I see a 50-seat Democratic loss as the most likely outcome, with the potential for things to get considerably worse.

One way to sort through these different scenarios is to examine what drives these losses for Democrats. Is 2010 shaping up to be an Anti-Incumbent, Anti-Liberal or Anti-Democratic year? This isn’t easily reducible to statistical testing, but I think it goes a long way toward explaining whether Democrats will lose 20 seats, 50 seats, or 80 seats.

Writer Sean Trende breaks down each scenario, but pretty much any way you look at it, the tea leaves are forecasting doom for the Democrats. His conclusion:

The historical record provides no support for 2010 being a generalized anti-incumbent year; the elections to date this cycle in major statewide races certainly don’t support this scenario either. The real question is whether moderate or conservative Democrats who oppose the Beltway Democratic agenda will be given cover from angry voters, or whether the electorate will thoroughly clean house this fall. That’s where the difference between a bad Democratic year and a debacle of historic proportions can be found.

Grab some popcorn and your favorite beverage and read the whole thing. Then tell us what you think.