WASHINGTON - Every so often, luck and circumstance give birth to an accidental congressman or senator, a politician who lands in Washington mainly by being in the right place at the right time.
Once in a very long while, those accidents come in droves.
That's what happened when Ronald Reagan's 1980 landslide helped turn a six-pack of Republican nonentities into U.S. senators. None ever won a Senate election again, and their now-forgotten names (Jim Abdnor, Mark Andrews, Jeremiah Denton, John East, Paula Hawkins, Mack Mattingly) are just the answer to a trivia question. But while in office, the one-term wonders helped Reagan engineer big changes in the federal government.
Today, a similar trend may be on the horizon. This time it's Democratic candidates who have the good fortune to be running with a strong wind at their back.
Even before the financial crisis became the overwhelming factor in the election, a top aide to John McCain was calling 2008 the worst environment in decades for Republican candidates. When times are bad, voters punish the party that holds the White House, and Barack Obama isn't the only Democrat who could benefit.
As the financial markets tanked, strategists in both parties were scrambling to revise upward their estimates of Democratic gains and Republican losses in next month's Senate and House contests.
"The floor is dropping," Republican analyst Ed Rollins said the other day, envisioning a blowout election that could cost Republicans 10 Senate seats and 25 in the House. His forecast is roughly in line with estimates by others who specialize in congressional races.
If the returns match the predictions, the impact could be profound.
It "will give Barack everything he needs to basically move an agenda," Rollins, who worked in the Reagan White House, said on CNN.
Democrats already control the Congress, but the Senate is almost evenly divided. And when it comes to legislative majorities, size does matter, especially in the Senate.
It takes a "super majority" of 60 senators, out of 100, to keep the minority from bottling up legislation. If Democrats pick up nine Republican seats and don't lose any, it will the first time since Jimmy Carter was president that one party had 60 senators.
With "sixty votes, they can control everything," Republican Rep. Tom Davis, one of his party's top campaign strategists, told a National Press Club audience the other day.
