Jamie Weinstein

The political earthquake that shook the country Tuesday, when Republican Scott Brown trounced Democrat Martha Coakley in a special election for Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat, raises a scary question for Democratic senators scheduled to face voters in November: If a Democrat can’t even win in Massachusetts, who else might be in jeopardy that is not currently on the political radar?

Nah! Couldn't be . . .

Before Brown was declared the victor Tuesday night, Indiana Democratic Senator Evan Bayh was warning of a “catastrophe” for Democrats in November if party officials didn’t draw the right lessons from what was happening in Massachusetts.

“If you lose Massachusetts and that’s not a wake-up call, there’s no hope of waking up,” Bayh told ABC News. “Whenever you have just the furthest left elements of the Dem party attempting to impose their will on the rest of the country – that’s not going to work too well.”

Is Bayh concerned because he feels he may be vulnerable in November?

Indiana is a politically conservative state. Of the last 11 presidential elections, the state has gone for the Republican candidate 10 times. Its one exception was in 2008 when it narrowly went for Barack Obama. Nonetheless, the state’s conservative credentials are hardly in question.

Professional political prognosticators have so far stood in near unanimity in declaring Bayh’s seat as secure.  The Cook Political Report, Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, CQ Politics, The Rothenberg Political Report, The Swing State Project and Campaign Diaries all have Bayh’s seat listed as safe in 2010. So do all the Indiana political experts I reached out to for an analysis of the 2010 Indiana Senate race.

“I don’t foresee a scenario, much less a likely one, where Sen. Bayh would be defeated,” Marjorie Hershey, a political science professor at the University of Indiana-Bloomington, told me via email.

“Bayh has one of the more conservative voting records among Senate Democrats,” former Indiana University Southeast Professor Philip Wolf proffered. “He has won repeatedly in statewide elections in Indiana.  Many Hoosiers remember his parents, both of whom were popular in the state. I shall be very surprised if he does not win re-election.”

Yet, while I solicited this analysis before Brown’s devastating victory in Massachusetts, I asked these political experts to take into account what had already become a surprisingly close race in the Bay State. Are all these experts blind to the potential Republican tidal wave in 2010?

After all, if even Ted Kennedy’s seat in liberal Massachusetts was vulnerable, what makes experts so sure that Evan Bayh’s seat in conservative Indiana is so safe? Sure, Massachusetts was an open seat, and Bayh is an incumbent with a long record of electoral success in the state. But this just may not be enough. Among other things, Bayh did vote for the Senate health care bill, a vote that is not likely to be too popular in Indiana.

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One reason experts have declared Bayh’s seat as safe is that some feel that there is not a viable candidate so far on the Republican side.  But there is at least one candidate some see as a possible threat if he enters the race: Republican Congressman Mike Pence.

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol suggested that Pence jump into the race last month. “Sure, it’s a long shot (Bayh got 62 percent of the vote in 2004),” he wrote on his magazine’s blog. “But if voters are as upset as they may well be, Pence could make the race competitive.”

This, I remind you, was before Tuesday’s Massachusetts massacre. Things have changed. No doubt a savvy politician like Mike Pence has noticed.

Whether or not Pence ultimately enters the race, and no matter what expert political prophets thought before Tuesday, what happened in Massachusetts has sent a clear and undeniable message that few Democratic seats are safe this cycle. Some seats, which were previously thought to be secure, must now be re-evaluated. The American people are unhappy with what’s going on in Washington. A Democratic senator in a conservative state like Bayh, even with all his advantages and personal popularity, is surely more vulnerable than the experts have so far suggested.

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