They still have a shot at 60 seats now, lol. We really have no idea what the political environment will be like in a year.
Historically that is highly unlikely. Even in a favorable midterm, the party that controls the White House almost always has trouble ousting incumbent opposition party Senators. It's not to say Democrats won't lose some, but 8 would be GOP wave numbers and with Trump in office it's hard to argue even for a neutral year when he is digging their party into a ditch with the electorate.
It's undeniable the Republican Party's strength right now, but that came from a succession of favorable election years under what was an unpopular Democratic president
(save for his entry, reelection and leaving office). Republicans aren't invincible, rather I think that 8 years is a long time and that is how long it has been since Republicans had a deeply unpopular president wrapped around their necks.
As it stands now, it's actually pretty remarkable things went downhill for Republicans so fast. It took Republicans a lot longer to start posting consistently comfortable leads in the generic ballot than it did for Democrats in 2017.
we're currently in a pro-D political environment that rivals if not eclipses 2006/2008, yet actual election results have not lined up with this reality outside of a couple crimson red seats Dems didn't try in (KS/SC.) It seems like every time Dems actually try in a race, they end up bungling it somehow (GA, MT, and now possibly VA.)
To be fair, Georgia's race was not really a friendly district - there are a lot more that are better targets and with electorates more friendly to Democrats. Coming in at around Clinton's numbers could have been the best Ossoff could do at this point, given how fast the district moved towards Democrats already. As for Montana, well even as he assaulted a reporter, most of the vote was already in at that point. Had he done it maybe a week or two prior, we
could be having a different discussion. Suffice to say that there is a reason Trump picked incumbents from these districts, and not, say, people like Coffman, Upton or LoBiondo.
Point is, those Congressional races were all in tough, deeply conservative districts, ones Republicans probably wouldn't even expect to lose in a wave. If you look at the performance of Democrats in the oodles of legislative special elections, they have made decent gains and over-performed quite a bit. I think the average of it is +11 or +12 points better than they should, which even surpasses most of the generic ballot leads.
There was a Cook article (
link) recently that went over something I've been saying for a while now, and that is that Virginia's gubernatorial race isn't the one to watch. It's the HoD races. That is where people's default opinions / opinions of the president tend to play out. It's easier for a single Republican candidate to wage an effective campaign for a single high-profile statewide race, but all those smaller races that people are largely in the dark about are where you see a potential wave building. So far Democrats have been posting pretty tall leads in the HoD generic ballot, which could translate to substantial gains. Maybe not enough to flip it, given all the incumbents Republicans have, but enough to use 2019 to build a majority.
I get your pessimism, I think it's warranted in some respects
(NJ Democrats should be performing better given the state's leanings, but oh well), but after the Obama years, I find the energy on the left and current special election results (as a whole) rather encouraging
