Although there are 12 official retirement announcements, there are 2 unofficial retirement announcements to keep an eye on (Davis for Senate in Virginia and Pearce for Senate in New Mexico)

Not to mention the countless widely speculated retirements from a number of Republican congresspersons

One thing to keep in mind in Ohio is that Governor Strickland is extremely popular and I assume he will be doing everything he can to help democratic congressional candidates, being a former congressman himself.  

Check out these detailed House Rankings to find out how these seats are rated.

Last year, several Democrats won in similarly red districts, such as Baron Hill in IN-09, Zack Space in OH-18 and Melissa Bean in IL-08, so we know Democrats can win in these districts. The challenge is to elect a better Democrat in an R+6 district than these Bush Dogs have proven themselves to be.

I'm familiar with the complaints about Baron Hill and Melissa Bean. I share the netroots disdain for Bean, not so much because of how she's voted as because her district is a resource sponge that absorbs millions to keep it Blue, using money that might flip several low-cost seats elsewhere if it were differently allocated.

But what's your beef with Congressman Space? I will readily concede that I haven't followed his voting record closely. But my notes from 2006 indicate that the DLC types were wringing their hands over his victory in the primary, because they were backing a social conservative who 'fit the district better.'

Has Space voted worse than a gay-hating mayor who had doubts about choice, for women, would have? (That's what my notes say about the Democratic front-runner he beat, in the 2006 primary.)

Just asking. Politics is the art of the possible, and I have OH-18 marked on my charts as an improbable win, for progress, from last time.

Seems to me the biggest effect of this retirement is that without a long-term incumbent, the 7th is now the most likely Ohio district to be eliminated in the next round of redistricting. It sprawls across the lower half of the state and is contiguous with six other districts. It's major population center in the Columbus suburbs will likely be consolidated into the 12th or 15th if a Democrat wins one of those, to protect the incumbent in a smaller, Columbus-based district. Remember, with Strickland as Governor and a Dem SOS, the Rethugs will not be able to run the table on redistricting like last time, even if they keep both houses of the state legislature through 2010.

We may have a hard time winning the seat, but the silver lining will be that it will be their seat, not ours, that ceases to exist.

The map in Singer's link does prove the point about the Strickland and Brown results, but only if you know how to read it, and there's no information on how to do that here - in order to figure that out you have to go to the original site (http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/U S_election/) and look at the key to find out how this map was organized. According to the key, the map shows results for four different races in each district, not something that is a common way to show information. When you click on Singer's link, there should at least be some explanation of how the map shows the Strickland and Brown results to make the map relevant to this posting. Posting the graphic without the text was useful only for people willing to take the next step and dig farther to get the original map.