We all know what’s going to happen the week after next in the US mid-term elections. The Republicans will get a pasting over the war in Iraq. But what if it doesn’t happen?

The Rightthinker blog has picked up on the Senate battle between Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont in Connecticut:

Joe Lieberman looks set to crush Ned Lamont… Lieberman, despite being Al Gore’s Vice Presidential running mate in 2000, was dumped by his party as their Senate candidate… Joe Lieberman then decided to run as an Independent. Lieberman is a hawk on foreign policy…

How does that fit the received wisdom?

There’s more heresy in the London Daily Telegraph, too:

Opinion polls uniformly predict the Republicans will lose control of the House of Representatives and Senate. Pundits from the hard Right to the Bush-hating cocktail set have formed an orderly line predicting disaster for Republicans.

A second set of indicators tell a different story, prompting Americans to question if the predictive power of dollars and economic statistics is more accurate than the whole political class.

Wall Street has rejected the orthodoxies of Washington’s masters of gloom…

The Telegraph highlights a report in financial magazine Barron’s: “Jubilant Democrats should reconsider their order for confetti and noisemakers,” Washington bureau chief Jim McTague writes.

According to McTague’s analysis, the Republicans may lose as few as eight seats in the House of Representatives and just three in the Senate. At best, he says, the Democrats will pick up 14 House seats, one short of the number needed to claim victory. The Republicans would still remain in control of both chambers.