HUH?

Sometimes, I read things that make me feel like I'm living on a different planet.

In the Associated Press article "Democrats loath to predict win this fall," David Espo makes an assertion that runs counter to just about everything I've been hearing and reading for months.

He writes:

Call it the campaign with no margin for Republican error, in a nation that is war-weary and eager for change, yet seems wary of the Democratic option.

Even Republicans tacitly concede they will lose seats in both the House and Senate in Nov. 7 elections midway through President Bush's second term. Yet Democrats, long out of power, are loath to predict publicly they will gain the six Senate and 15 House seats they need for control of Congress.

Are you kidding?

The Dems are giddy over their chances to regain control.

Some are so confident that they are betting the farm on it.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Rep. Charles Rangel, a senior Democrat in Congress and the dean of New York's congressional delegation, said Wednesday he'll retire if the Democrats don't retake control of the House this year.

"I'm a poker player and I've had good hands all night long. This is all in," Rangel said in an interview. "I would not put everything on the table if I thought for one minute we would lose."

Rangel, ranking Democrat on the House Ways & Means Committee, is 76 years old and has spent 35 years in Congress. The Democrats need to gain 15 seats in the 2006 midterm election to retake control of the House _ a victory that would return Rangel to the chairmanship of the powerful committee.

"Hell, if we don't take back the House, then the Democrats would go down in history, saying that there's no group in the world that can grab defeat from the jaws of victory," Rangel said in an interview Wednesday. "It just seems like America is so frustrated and fed up like I am and if she's not, then I may have to say maybe it's me."

That doesn't sound like a Dem "loath to predict publicly" that they will regain control of the House.

In fact, since at least May, the Dems have been assuming that the polls are already closed and they've won back the House.

In early May, The Washington Post reported on the Dems' certainty that voters would put them back in power come November.

Democratic leaders, increasingly confident they will seize control of the House in November, are laying plans for a legislative blitz during their first week in power that would raise the minimum wage, roll back parts of the Republican prescription drug law, implement homeland security measures and reinstate lapsed budget deficit controls.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said in an interview last week that a Democratic House would launch a series of investigations of the Bush administration, beginning with the White House's first-term energy task force and probably including the use of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Pelosi denied Republican allegations that a Democratic House would move quickly to impeach President Bush. But, she said of the planned investigations, "You never know where it leads to."

In recent days, Democratic confidence has been buoyed by a series of polls indicating that not only is Bush growing increasingly unpopular, so are Republicans in Congress. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Friday found that 33 percent of the public approves of Bush's job performance, the lowest rating of his presidency. And only 25 percent approves of the job Congress is doing, a figure comparable to congressional approval ratings before the 1994 elections that swept Republicans to power.

..."We have to be ready to win," Pelosi said, "and we have to tell [voters] what we will do when we win."

..."We are more and more confident that we are going to have the responsibility of leading the House, so we have to prepare," said House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (Md.).

...House Democrats have formulated a plan of action for their first week in control. Their leaders said a Democratic House would quickly vote to raise the minimum wage for the first time since 1997. It would roll back a provision in the Republicans' Medicare prescription drug benefit that prohibits the Department of Health and Human Services from negotiating prices for drugs offered under the program.

It would vote to fully implement the recommendations of the bipartisan panel convened to shore up homeland security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Democratic leaders said.

And it would reinstate lapsed rules that say any tax cuts or spending increases have to be offset by spending cuts or tax increases to prevent the federal deficit from growing.

Sorry but that's not being "loath to predict publicly" a big win.

Espo's not kidding anyone who's been paying attention.