Quick additional point: the media is crowing about Obama’s ground game. The GOP got this ground game thing down in 2002. Even in 2006, they did an incredible job dragging grumpy, dispirited GOP voters to the polls to vote. Instead of losing a bunch of House races in blowouts, most of the defeats were by surprisingly close margins. And now we have a Congress with an even lower approval rating than the last one, only I don’t think many Americans have yet figured out that Democrats now run the place.
You're right about how close 2006 really was. As Dubya said, there were a lot of close races, but they all broke one way, so in the end it was a collective butt whoopin' (or however he phrased it). That's why I'm so fired up about the GOP potentially knocking off a LOT of vulnerable freshman Dems in GOP-leaning or split districts. But of course the negative Nellies pooh-pooh such a thought.