Matthews: GOP could pick up 10 Senate seats

MSNBC host Chris Matthews said on Sunday Democrats could lose 10 Senate seats in the midterm elections.

“To the Democrats, this election, a rosy scenario is to lose five Senate seats, not six,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

{mosads}“They could lose 10. And so, what they’ve said is, ‘If we’re going to lose 10 seats potentially,’ and they could well do that, a big sweep, they’re going to the battle stations.”

“Nothing on Social Security. All-out talk about minimum wage. Nothing on trade. … Nothing’s going to get done, because both parties have gone to their base,” Matthews added.

David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times, said earlier on the program that, while immigration reform, a fast-track trade deal and chained CPI would help the economy, their future is bleak.

“So these are all gigantic, very good policies, where there is majority support and where, in the old days in Washington, you’d cobble together a bipartisan coalition and get rid of the fringes,” Brooks said. “But right now, the fringes have veto power over everything else, and nobody’s found a solution to that.”

Republicans last month believed they had widened the map to nearly a dozen competitive contests when former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie announced he would run in Virginia against Sen. Mark Warner (D), a state previously thought to be off the table.

While Republicans were feeling increasingly optimistic, they stopped short of bold public predictions, remembering the dashed expectations of recent election cycles in which Tea Party candidates torpedoed their chances.