PA-12

UPDATE: Bill Russell now only down 1.8% against Murtha. And a tipster points out that Dennis Kucinich only leads Republican Jim Trakas by 10 points in his heavily Democratic Cleveland seat.

It will come as no surprise that our prospects in the House of Representatives look dim. In many ways, this is more disconcerting than the Presidential race because we thought 2006 was the "correction" that readied us for a bounceback or at least a status quo year in 2008. Every historical precedent to date suggests that "waves" do not come in twos.

But 2008 is NOT like 2006 in at least one significant respect: unlike 2006, at least one, and perhaps at least a handful of Democratic incumbents are in real danger of losing. And many of these newly vulnerable incumbents are mostly nowhere near the NRCC's Tier One targets, or what you thought would have been the targets three months ago.

These are entrenched incumbents like Jack Murtha (PA-12), Bobby David Scott (GA-13), and Paul Kanjorski (PA-11), suggesting that post-bailout, there is a broadly anti-incumbent sentiment in the electorate, not just an anti-Republican one. There are probably a few more we don't know, but the House pollster of record (Daily Kos/R2K) probably won't bother polling them.

In PA-12, longshot challenger Bill Russell is now within 4 of Murtha after Okinawa Jack called Western Pennsylvanians racists and rednecks. 2006 Murtha challenger Diana Irey was a much stronger candidate, and got clobbered by 22 points.

In GA-13, Bobby Scott's own campaign released an internal poll (!!) showing him up 5 points over Republican Deborah Honeycutt. TPM tried to rough up Honeycutt for her aggressive direct mail tactics, a controversy we covered here at TNR. And get this: in 2006, Scott defeated Honeycutt 69-31. A close race here would signal a remarkable turnaround from '06.

And in PA-11, Lou Barletta routinely runs ahead of gaffe-prone, self-dealing Paul Kanjorski (disclaimer: my firm has done some work for Barletta). This is a Cook PVI Dem +5 seat. And even Swing State Project is saying "Bye Bye Kanjorski."

What are we to make of this?