How Accurate Was The Republican Party "Death List" Memo?

Pretty accurate. The memo ranked 57 vulnerable Republican-held seats in the House plus 19 Democratic-held seats where they thought they had a shot. Lets look at the Democratic seats first. It would have been impossible not to put serial adulterer and anti-progressive hack Tim Mahoney (FL-16) in any spot but #1. Mahoney defines "treacherous and untrustworthy," opportunistically betraying his lifelong political party, the Republicans, the moment Rahm Emanuel whispered in his ear that Mark Foley was fooling around with young boys and that the story would break before the 2006 election. He then betrayed his wife and family by chasing multiple women and having affairs with them, all the while betraying the Democratic Party by voting time and again with the GOP on key substantive items. What a mess! And as hideous a candidate as Tom Rooney was, he swamped Mahoney with 60% of the vote, 207,944 to 138,366. Mahoney deserved to lose the seat. And the Democrats deserved to lose the seat for having inserted a Republican into their own party to make it "easier" to win.

The other Democratic seats they thought they had a good shot at were AL-05, from which Bud Cramer is retiring, NH-01, scene of a classic rematch between a strong progressive and a typical corporate stooge and reactionary rubber stamp, PA-10, a match between a right-wing Democratic freshman and an even more right-wing Republican, and TX-22, also a match between a right-wing Democratic freshman and an even more right-wing Republican. The open seat in Alabama was tight but the reactionary Democrat beat the reactionary Republican. The much ballyhooed New Hampshire re-match, despite millions of dollars worth of smear ads being run against Carol Shea-Porter by GOP front groups, only further proved that voters there were through with the GOP. When Carol first beat Bradley in 2006 she took the race with 100,899 to his 94,869. Last week she won with 176,461 to his 156,394. In PA-10 Carney was re-elected with 56% and in TX-22 Nick Lampson was beaten, garnering only 45%. Why would any with progressive inclinations vote for anyone as reactionary as he is, even if the Republican was worse?

The GOP rate their chances to beat Democratic incumbents Jim Marshall (GA), Steve Kagen (WI), Harry Mitchell (AZ), Don Cazayoux (LA), Travis Childers (MS), Paul Kanjorski (PA), Nancy Boyda (KS), Baron Hill (IN), Gabrielle Giffords (AZ), Jerry McNerney (CA), Bill Foster (IL), John Yarmuth (KY), Jason Altmire (PA) and the open seat in Oregon as worth spending money on. In Louisiana they lucked out when a moderate African American state Senator, Michael Jackson, pulled 12% of the vote, making it possible for Bill Cassidy to beat ultra-reactionary nominal Democrat Don Cazayoux, 48-40%. He deserved to lose. Nancy Boyda didn't, but the moderate Democrat was beaten by a moderate Republican Lynn Jenkins, 51-46%. Democrats won the rest of the seats, including OR-05's open seat where far right extremist loon Mike Erickson only garnered 38% of the vote, another Republican fanatic coming face to face with reality.

As for the races where the GOP feared they were most likely to lose red seats, they guessed much more accurately. Of the 11 they were pretty certain of losing, they only managed to hold on to one-- NJ-07 where a moderate Republican, Leonard Lance, beat Linder Stender. There's still confusion in the at-large Alaska seat, where crooked wingnut Don Young is ahead.

The rest of these red seats all went to Democrats:

AZ-01 (Renzi's old seat), IL-11 (Weller's old seat), NJ-03 (Saxton's old seat), NY-13 (Fossella's old seat), NY-25 (Walsh's old seat), VA-11 (Davis' old seat), FL-24 (where Feeney was slaughtered), NY-29 (where Kuhl lost), and MI-07 (where Walberg lost).

The next category, 7 probably losses shows 6 new Democrats on the board and an undecided race between Charlie Brown and Tom McClintock in an R+11 Northern California district where Charlie is likely to prevail as long as all the votes are counted. The other red district GOP losses from this category were:

MD-01 (Gilchrest's old seat), NM-01 (Wilson's old seat), OH-16 (Regula's old seat), NC-08 (where Robin Hayes lost by an astounding 10%), CO-04 (where Marilyn Musgrave was buried under a 12 point avalanche), and MI-09 (where Joe Knollenberg only managed to get 43% of the vote).

The Republican "Death List" memo was hopeful that they could hold on to 38 other vulnerable red seats. Instead they lost 9 of them-- have a run-off in another and will probably lose OH-15 when the counting is completed. The districts they lost:

CT-04 (Chris Shayes finally defeated), NM-02 (Pearce's old seat, who gave it up to run a disastrous race for the Senate, where he was slaughtered by Tom Udall), NV-03 (where Jon Porter lost), OH-01 (where Steve Chabot was rejected by his constituents), PA-03 (where Phil English's awful record finally caught up with him), FL-08 (where progressive Alan Grayson stunned Insiders by ending the career of corporate shill Ric Keller), ID-01 (another shocker, which saw Bill Sali go down to well-earned defeat), VA-02 (where Thema Drake lost her seat) and VA-05 where corrupt bigot Virgil Goode was forcibly retired by progressive Tom Perriello.