Just for kicks, how about I play the Senate prognostication game?

I’ll start with the seats that look plenty safe to me as of lunchtime today.

Including the Vermont seat, where one Democrat-with-an-“(I)” is being replaced with another, there are 12 Democratic seats that were never in play: CA (Feinstein), DE (Carper), FL (Nelson), HI (Akaka), MA (Kennedy), NE (Nelson), NM (Bingaman), NY (Clinton), ND (Conrad), VT (Sanders), WV (Byrd), WI (Kohl).

CT was also never going to be a Republican pickup; and as soon as the air went out of the last balloon from Ned Lamont’s victory party, it was also never going to go to anyone but Joe Lieberman. Lucky for him Connecticut has a tradition of re-electing mavericks who leave their parties and run as independents…and even luckier for him that in all the Lamont TV ads, his opponent has that look, that way-too-alert flavor of crazy look that one most often sees in messianic chiropractors.

MN was close enough in the last Presidential election that Rep. Kennedy had hopes here, but he’s not been able to get anywhere; Klobuchar is home free to hold Dayton’s seat for the Democrats.

In MI, the Democratic governor is increasingly unpopular, but she doesn’t seem to be enough of a drag on the ticket to counteract the opposing drag from the unpopularity of the President. Stabenow is home free.

WA is too deeply blue these days for even the most aggressive Republican challenger to be able to topple the most mediocre of Democratic incumbents. National Republicans held out hope for this one for awhile, but Cantwell won’t be beaten.

So that’s 16 seats the Democrats will successfully defend.

On the Republican side, there are 7 seats that were never in play: IN (Lugar), ME (Snowe), MS (Lott), NV (Ensign), TX (Hutchison), UT (Hatch), WY (Thomas).

Add to that AZ, where Kyl has looked to be home free for awhile. Democratic hopes that a popular governor coasting to re-election would help them in the Senate race don’t seem to have panned out.

That totals 8 seats that the Republicans will hold without difficulty.

Now for the fun part: the remaining 9 races that have stayed in play. My analysis of those will follow in the next post. (After lunch, of course…one’s priorities must always remain in the proper order!)