From Elizabeth Wilner, Mark Murray, Huma Zaidi, and Jennifer Colby.
No party has ever retaken the House without winning the Senate, but that may change tomorrow.  A tightening of a handful of key Senate races, per the latest round of MSNBC/McClatchy polls conducted by Mason-Dixon, suggests that Democrats are more likely to gain five seats or fewer than the six seats needed to retake control.  In addition to winning Pennsylvania and Ohio, Democrats would need to run the table on all the tight races -- GOP-held Missouri, Montana, Rhode Island and Virginia, plus their own seat in Maryland -- to net six.  Or, they'd need to win four of those five plus pick up Tennessee, which may be more out of reach, though Democrats say the latest polls don't accurately reflect high early voting by African-Americans.

In the event of a five-seat Democratic gain and a 50-50 Senate, Republicans would continue to hold a nominal majority by virtue of Vice President Cheney's ability to break a tie vote.  Speculation will begin immediately about whether Republicans will agree to share power with Democrats per the agreement struck by leaders Trent Lott (R) and Tom Daschle (D) after the 2000 election, the last time the Senate was 50-50.  Under that agreement, which was unprecedented at the time, both parties had an equal number of seats on the key committees that draft bills and handle presidential nominees.  Other provisions were implemented to avoid gridlock. 

It's not clear whether Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and expected GOP Leader Mitch McConnell will reach a similar agreement.  Democrats would have some leverage because the Senate can't get down to business (committee meetings, etc.) until it's "organized," and 60 votes are required for that vote to organize.  So Democrats have the means to keep the Senate from getting to work.

Should Democrats retake the House but not the Senate, it would likely be because voters feel particularly angry with the House GOP leadership for their handling of the Mark Foley scandal, and also for former Majority Leader Tom DeLay's prolonged fall from grace and the series of other scandals that have plagued individual members (Cunningham, Ney, Weldon, Sherwood, etc.).  House Republicans failed to pass any significant lobbying or ethics reform this year to inoculate themselves.  The further they got from the Jack Abramoff scandal, which came to a head last December and January, the more confident they became that voters wouldn't hold them accountable.

But this will be a protest election above all -- more a rejection of Bush and his Iraq policy than an endorsement of Democrats and their agenda.  As we've said before, Democrats made a calculated decision not to offer an agenda beyond their publicly popular "Six for '06" list, and for that reason, voters have come to see the party as what our NBC/Wall Street Journal pollsters call a "marginally acceptable alternative" to the GOP majority.

A switch in control of the House but not the Senate would defy history, not only because it's never happened before, but because the party holding the White House has lost an average of six Senate seats, as well as nearly 36 House seats, in "six-year itch" elections since 1938.  However, it would conform to a much more recent trend of the President's party seeing mitigated losses because of more sophisticated redistricting (in the case of House races), fewer retirements, and political miscalculations (like the GOP’s impeachment of President Clinton).  In 1998, Democrats picked up five House seats, and in 2002, Republicans gained nine House and two Senate seats. 

To the extent that Democrats will have a "mandate" should they win control of one or both houses of Congress, it will be to do something to force Bush's hand on Iraq policy, as NBC's Mike Viqueira points out.  To a lesser extent, depending on the election results, we might see a rejection of Bush's Social Security plan.  But there probably won't be any Democratic "political capital" to be squandered.  Bush and Speaker Nancy Pelosi would essentially be faced with the same choices over the next year, before the 2008 race overwhelms everything.  They could start those battles now, pick fights to fire up the base, and "win by losing" legislatively.  Or, they could find some areas of common ground and "triangulate" to pass a few high-profile items.

Logic points to the latter, Viq says.  What would Bush and his legacy have to gain through politics as usual?  Why not try to avoid spending the next two years ceding the limelight to presidential hopefuls in the Senate while his agenda languishes?  Democrats might read another message in tomorrow's results -- that voters are sick of partisan gridlock. 

So what issues constitute the middle ground between the President and House Democrats?  One is immigration, as First Read has noted before.  As Viq notes, the votes certainly will be there to pass Bush's goal of a path to citizenship and a guest-worker program.  Another might be the extension of some of the tax cuts passed in Bush's first term that are set to expire after 2010, namely the $1,000-per-child tax credit and "marriage penalty" relief.

The Democratic caucus is likely to remain 70% liberal, and the base that they represent will be calling for payback for 12 years of oppression at the hands of the GOP.  But don't expect prominent Democrats like Henry Waxman, who's in line to head the premier investigative committee in the House, to overreach.  Every Democrat Viq spoke with on this topic over the last few days mentioned the name "Dan Burton" by way of illustrating what they would like to avoid: turning the committee room into a circus.  Having said that, investigations into Halliburton's Iraq contracts are an obvious and likely place for them to start.

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