Ready for the next election?
I think the big mistake we made after the 2008 election was not looking ahead to the House contests of 2010. Let's not make that mistake this time. Let's start focusing now on the vulnerable GOP congressmen so that we can hold their feet to the fire (hopefully getting them to actually go along with the President instead of being obstructionists) over the next two years and then defeat them in November of 2014.
Because of GOP gerrymandering we're in a difficult position. It's going to be difficult to win back a majority, but not impossible.
If we focus our energy on these districts that are actually winnable then I think we can do it.
(EDIT: I'm editing this based on some of the comments... I am going to BOLD the GOP congressmen who were incumbents coming into this election with the assumption that if they were incumbents who won by less than 10% then they are more likely to be vulnerable in the future rather than if they were newly elected in a district that is now quite red due to redistricting.)
These are the ten seats I found where we lost by less than 5% this year:
IL 13: Rodney Davis
KY 6: Andy Barr
MI 1: Dan Benishek
OH 16: Jim Renacci
PA 12: Keith Rothfus
CO 6: Mike Coffman
FL 10: Dan Webster
MN 6: Michelle Bachmann
NY 27: Chris Collins
IN 2: Jackie Walorski
Unfortunately 10 seats isn't enough to get us to 218. We're probably going to need about 20. So let's expand the field by adding the 16 seats I found where we lost by 5% to 10%:
CA 10: Jeff Denham
FL 2: Steve Southerland
FL 16: Vern Buchanan
IA 3: Tom Latham
IA 4: Steve King
MI 3: Justin Amash
MI 11: Kerry Bentivolio
MN 2: John Kline
NC 8: Richard Hudson
NJ 3: Jon Runyan
NV 3: Joe Heck
NY 11: Mike Grimm
NY 19: Christopher Gibson
OH 6: Bill Johnson
TX 14: Randy Weber
VA 2: Scott Rigell
There's a decent shot I'm missing some on my lists as I didn't go through all 435 house races, but instead used the "Races to Watch" listing here: http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/... to find these 26 targets.
Still; if we start focusing on these 26 now and do everything we can to beat them in 2014 we will have a shot at giving President Obama two years with a House he can actually work with.
And maybe (long shot) we can pressure these vulnerable Republicans into working with the President now...