Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., is similarly positioned and, wisely, is doing similar things to keep her seat.
Then there is the curious case of Sen. Roland Burris in Illinois. According to Villanova’s Brown, the only way the GOP takes that seat is if Democrats form a "circular firing squad" and fracture their party in a bitter primary.
The primary in President Obama’s home state is early -- February 2010 -- giving Democrats plenty of time to regroup if they dump Burris.
The GOP has a “maybe” chance in New York with Hillary Clinton's old Senate seat, although her successor, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, is well-suited to the state -- an upstater who isn’t so heinously conservative that Manhattanites vote GOP. In reality, 2010 probably will not be a reverse of 2006 for Republicans; maybe they pick up one or two seats overall.
Brown thinks Obama's potential drag on Senate candidates will be based strictly on the economy: “Americans don't like being patient for economic growth. ... Economic prosperity is ideologically linked to freedom and opportunity.”
Any politicians who counsel voters to lower their expectations likely will find themselves on the wrong side of public opinion.
People may be patient for most of this year, but at some point Obama’s reservoir of goodwill will run dry. If his approval rating falls below 50 percent before March 2010, then he likely will drag down those Democrats running that November.