text: Obama’s Midterm Loss Record Could Make History 
   
   By Stuart Rothenberg 
   
   President Barack Obama is about to do what no president has done in the past 50 years: Have two horrible, terrible, awful midterm elections in a row. 
   
   In fact, Obama is likely to have the worst midterm numbers of any two-term president going back to Democrat Harry S. Truman. 
   
   Truman lost a total of 83 House seats during his two midterms (55 seats in 1946 and 28 seats in 1950), while Republican Dwight Eisenhower lost a combined 66 House seats in the 1954 and 1958 midterms. 
   
   Obama had one midterm where his party lost 63 House seats, and Democrats are expected to lose another 5 to possibly 12 House seats (or more), taking the sitting president’s total midterm House loses to the 68 seat to 75 seat range. 
   
   (Join us on Election Night: Live Stream With Analysis, Results and More at RollCall.com) 
   
   Most recent presidents have one disastrous midterm and another midterm that was not terrible. 
   
   The GOP lost 30 House seats in George W. Bush’s second midterm, but gained 8 seats in his first midterm for a net loss of 22 seats. The party lost 26 seats in Ronald Reagan’s first midterm, but a mere 5 seats in his second midterm for a net loss of 31 seats. 
   
   Democrats got shellacked in 1994, losing 54 seats in Bill Clinton’s first midterm, but the party gained 5 House seats in 1998, Clinton’s six-year-itch election, for a net Clinton loss of 49 House seats. (The figures don’t include special elections during a president’s term.) 
   
   Looking at Senate losses, Republicans lost a net of 5 seats in George W. Bush’s two midterms, while Republicans lost a net of 7 seats during Ronald Reagan’s two midterms and Democrats lost a net of 8 seats during Bill Clinton’s two midterms. (Again, these numbers do not reflect party switches or special elections.) 
   
   Democrats have a chance to tie the number of Senate losses that Republicans suffered during the midterms of Eisenhower, when the GOP lost a net of 13 Senate seats (12 in 1958 and only one in 1954). 
   
   Democrats lost 6 Senate seats in 2010 and seem likely to lose from 5 to as many as 10 seats next week. That would add up to Obama midterm Senate losses of from 11 seats to as many as 16 seats. 
   
   Democrats will likely not exceed the number of Senate losses they incurred during the two Truman midterms, in 1946 and 1950, when the party lost a remarkable net of 17 seats. 
   
   (Interactive: How Much Is Your Member of Congress Worth?) 
   
   Are the Democrats’ losses due to the increasingly partisan nature of our elections and the makeup of the past two Senate classes, or is the president at least partially to blame because he failed to show leadership on key issues and never successfully moved to the political center? 
   
   The answer, most obviously, is, “Yes.” 
   
   Correction, 10:15 a.m. A previous version of this story misstated the year in which the Democrats lost 6 Senate seats during President Barack Obama’s tenure. 
   
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   Roll Call Election Map: Race Ratings for Every Seat 
   
   Get breaking news alerts and more from Roll Call in your inbox or on your iPhone. ||||| Senate Democrats have long awaited the 2010 tea party wave to splash back on Republicans during the 2016 election cycle. 
   
   That moment is almost here. 
   
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   After two years of obsessive focus on the teetering reelection prospects of red-state Democrats, the attention is about to shift in a major way to blue-state Republicans. Six of them who rode anti-Obama sentiment to office in 2010 are up in two years, and they’ll face the dual challenge of a more diverse electorate and potentially Hillary Clinton atop the Democratic ticket. 
   
   The leftward-tilting map means a GOP-controlled Senate could be short-lived if the party prevails on Tuesday. Even in the best-case scenario for the party, a Republican majority is certain to be slim. 
   
   (POLITICO's 2014 race ratings) 
   
   A half-dozen first-term Republicans are up for reelection in states President Barack Obama won in both 2008 and 2012: Mark Kirk of Illinois, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rob Portman of Ohio, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Marco Rubio of Florida. Obama also twice carried Sen. Chuck Grassley’s Iowa, but the longtime incumbent would be much tougher to dislodge. 
   
   Add it all up and it’s basically the mirror image of 2014. 
   
   “We shift the ground from where it was this time — seven Democrats were running in states that Obama didn’t carry — to an environment where seven Republicans are running in states that Obama did carry,” said Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of GOP leadership up for reelection in 2016. 
   
   Republicans are trying to look at the bright side of the intimidating terrain. If the GOP proves itself a responsible steward of Congress over the next two years, Republicans believe voters will be less inclined to oust vulnerable GOP incumbents. 
   
   (WATCH: Driving the Election Day: Colorado) 
   
   “If there’s an advantage to Republicans in the 2016 campaign … it’s the chance that you had to finally make the case,” said Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, the current National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman. 
   
   Democrats are also eyeing incumbents in states that Obama won in 2008 but lost four years later: Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana and Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, both of whom have under $800,000 on hand. Meanwhile, potential primary challenges could loom for Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — plus Blunt, Moran and South Dakota Sen. John Thune, a GOP leader, depending on the mood of conservative insurgents. 
   
   With House Republicans expected to pad their majority this November and possibly put the chamber out of reach in 2016, the battle for the Senate is expected to be the main undercard to the presidential election. And Senate Democratic insiders couldn’t be more excited for it, unable to recall a more favorable climate. 
   
   (Full 2014 election results) 
   
   “They start from a defensive crouch,” said one Senate Democratic aide of the Republicans. “It’s very unlikely that if they get a majority it will last longer than two years.” 
   
   There are select pick-up opportunities for Republicans, too. The biggest potential trophy is Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is up for reelection in Nevada. One formidable potential challenger is Gov. Brian Sandoval, a popular moderate governor. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) is the other obvious target for the GOP. 
   
   But for now, those are minor worries for Democrats. 
   
   (From POLITICO Magazine: Bet on a GOP Senate majority) 
   
   Both parties separate the blue-state GOP pack into two tiers of vulnerability. At the top of Democrats’ hit list and Republicans’ fears are the conservative Toomey and Johnson and the moderate Kirk. Their home states haven’t gone for Republican presidential candidates since the ’80s. 
   
   “You have to say that Toomey and Ron Johnson will have very competitive races,” said Charlie Black, an informal adviser to McCain. “Mark Kirk … won in that state before. He can again, [but] he’ll be the underdog.” 
   
   Names of several potential challengers are already being floated, according to party insiders. Democratic state Attorney General Lisa Madigan has been mentioned as a candidate in Illinois. Former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) could opt for a rematch against Johnson. And two names have surfaced in Pennsylvania: Attorney General Kathleen Kane and former Rep. Joe Sestak (D), who’s raising money for a rematch of his 2010 loss. 
   
   Toomey’s war chest sits at $5.4 million in cash at the end of September, Kirk has $1.5 million and Johnson has $669,000. Each spent more than $14 million in 2010, according to OpenSecrets. 
   
   “They’re not going to be caught by surprise,” said Kevin Madden, a former top campaign hand for Mitt Romney. “Those are folks that were counted as underdogs when they won.”
target: – Most of the national attention in Tuesday's election is focused on GOP gains in the Senate, but Roll Call points out that Republicans also are poised to hand President Obama a milestone he'd rather avoid in the House. Consider that Democrats lost 63 seats in the 2010 midterms are expected to lose five to 12 (or maybe more) seats on Tuesday. No president has lost as many in back-to-back midterms since Harry Truman lost 83 in 1946 and 1950, writes Stuart Rothenberg. Dwight Eisenhower managed to lose a total of 66, but Obama seems on track to top him. More typical is the pattern of Bill Clinton, who lost 54 in 1994 but bounced back with a gain of five in 1998. Still, if Tuesday is shaping up to be a night of celebration for the GOP, Politico offers a reality check, at least in the Senate: Several first-term Republicans in vulnerable states will be up for re-election in 2016. So even if Republicans win a small majority this year, they might have to give it right back two years later.