Even for a cynic, Harry Reid is optimistic about Dem. Senate prospects

Yesterday morning, I attended the Maria Leavey Breakfast with Majority Leader Harry Reid. I brought my Flip camera to get video -- and I did (except the sound didn't come through.) So, I waited for the transcript before I posted on the event.

Reid was his usual blunt self, answering questions on the record for the reporters and bloggers at the meeting. He didn't hold back. Nico Pitney posted one account here.

Couple of great lines from Reid. On Republican Senators:

First of all folks understand that the Republicans in the Senate do not represent mainstream Republicanism in the country. Mainstream
Republicanism in the country is moderate. The Republicans in the Senate are not moderates, with the one exception of Olympia Snowe are not moderates, they're right wing. And that includes some people who in the past have been moderates, someone you'd think like Arlen Specter. I talk about Arlen Specter in my book briefly and say that he's with us when we don't need him. (Laughter) Which is true, he never votes with us on an important vote. The only one who does is Olympia Snowe.

And on FISA:

As you know the Senate passed a bill that granted immunity, I and the majority of the Democrats opposed that, but there were still enough Democrats to join with the Republicans to pass it. I personally don't believe that the phone companies should have immunity and I certainly don't think Bush and Cheney should have immunity. And that's where we are. They are trying to work something out. These are public hearings, public negotiations most of the time, not all of the time, but remember this is not going to happen unless we have Chairman Conyers and others sign off on it, otherwise you can't get it done. So I think we have some good people involved in this. Hopefully we'll work something out on it. As I said, I think the mad rush for immunity was not intense as it was.

For me, the best moment was the last question asking the Majority Leader to handicap the upcoming Senate races.

After explaining how well all the incumbents are doing, Reid turned to the challengers and open seats. In his own words:

We're ahead in Virginia, I mean Virginia's not even close. We're ahead in New Mexico. We'll probably win in Colorado. We're very concerned about that state always even though Mark Udall's way ahead, because the Republicans, there's more than 100,000 more Republicans than Democrats in that state. It's changing significantly, you have a Democratic legislature, a Democratic governor so we're doing OK in Colorado and I think Udall will win. As we speak we're ten points ahead of Stevens in Alaska. Mayor Begich is in town today, I'm going to go to an event for him later on this morning. We have a primary in Oregon. We believe that Merkley who's speaker of the Assembly, can beat Smith.

We believe that Elizabeth Dole is going to be beaten. The niece of Lawton Chiles, governor and senator from Florida, who is running, she's a state senator, and she's only two or three points behind her right now and I think she's going to win that race, she meaning Kay Hagan.

We have, we got poll results back out of Texas, we're only four points behind in Texas.

We're tied in Mississippi as we speak.

We just have a lot of places to look that are very important. I believe that Maine is going to be our Rhode Island this time. I think Sue Collins who has favorability not nearly as high as Chaffee's, but once Allen starts tying her to what Bush has done Maine which has a very progressive state, are, they're going to turn her out

So we're going to pick up some seats I've only gone over a few of them. We're as I, I think I told you we're competitive as I speak in 11 seats, so I hope that we'll pick up a number, a few of them. I'm kind of a cynic about everything that way I'm not disappointed as often. So I think we'll pick up four seats, five seats.

Let's review what's in play: Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, North Carolina, Texas, Mississippi and Maine. Sounds good to me. I'd throw in New Hampshire, Minnesota and Nebraska (after Scott Kleeb wins tonight), too.