Do you Feel Something?

There has been speculation for months about the possibility of a Democratic surge and the party's chances of gaining control of a congressional chamber. But we are now getting close enough to the electoral shore that we can start to see the size of any political crest.

And judging by the parties' actions, a Democratic wave could be in the offing.

The Washington Post's Balz and VandeHei report today:

Faced with a deteriorating political climate, Republican Party officials are hoping to keep control of the House and Senate with a strategy aimed at shoring up enough endangered incumbents to preserve their majorities, while scaling back planned spending on races that now appear unwinnable.

The old adage about following the money is apporpriate here. Look past words and see where the parties are spending their cash.

You can tell were an election is going from the geographical shift it takes in the home stretch. When the battle is moving into one party's territory -- in other words if that party is redirecting its resources to protect its own while the opposition finds itself deciding among which previously long-shot races look most promising -- something is afoot.

In recent days, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has given back television time it had reserved in Democratic-held districts in West Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio -- apparently concluding that those races are beyond reach unless something dramatic changes the national political environment in the 25 days before the Nov. 7 election.

And:

Democrats, meanwhile, are juggling pleas for financial assistance from candidates in House districts once considered second-tier opportunities. The Democrats have ordered up polls in a dozen or more of these long-shot districts and now face a critical choice: whether to place bets on a few of these districts in the hope of expanding the field of competitive seats, or concentrate advertising dollars as planned on the roughly 20 to 25 districts where the odds appear most favorable.

There are of course other anecdotal indications, one of the most striking being the Cook Political Report's competitive House race chart. Typically the chart -- broken into "likely" "leaning" and "toss-up" categories for each party" -- has the most names in each party's "likely" column, with the fewest in the "toss-up" spaces.

As of this morning, there were no Democratic toss-up seats. There are, by contrast, 25 Republican toss-ups (an increase of one since mid-week, as Connectictut GOP Rep. Nancy Johnson slid over from "lean"). The Democrats' "lean" column has nine Democratic seats -- and four GOP seats in it, while the GOP "lean" column has 15 R seats. All told, Cook rates 19 Democratic seats as being competitive, as compared to 60 Republican seats.

The columnist E.J. Dionne has more anecdotal evidence, focusing on the collapse of the New York GOP. As Dionne notes:

For many Americans, "New York" evokes the liberal salons of Manhattan. But Manhattan is a small piece of the Empire State. Political change has been driven by the populous suburbs of Long Island and Westchester and Rockland counties, and by the vast stretches of Upstate New York that are far closer in spirit to the Midwest than to the Upper West Side or the Silk Stocking District.

The Republican collapse here has been driven by two streams of defectors: suburban moderates and Upstaters.

As a result, the entire Democratic ticket, led by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Eliot Spitzer, the party's candidate for governor, is expected by just about everyone to sweep the state. As many as five Upstate Republican congressional seats -- they would constitute a third of the 15 seats that Democrats need to win the House -- are in jeopardy.

The money-quote in the article comes from my old friend, long-shot Democratic candidate Dan Maffei.

"It's 'The Empire State Strikes Back,' " says Democrat Dan Maffei, a former congressional aide who is running a surprisingly strong race against Rep. Jim Walsh, the Republican incumbent, in a district that stretches from Syracuse to the Rochester area.

Maffei sees the immediate trend toward Democrats powered by frustration with President Bush and the Iraq war. But it is also rooted in long-term factors: the economic troubles of many Upstate communities, the area's "libertarian" leanings on cultural issues and the homelessness felt by many moderate Republicans in the face of a national party increasingly dominated by conservatives.

"Bush Republicanism," Maffei says, "is not for them."

If there is a Democratic surge it is candidates like Dan who might find themselves swept right into Congress.