Cook Political Report alters 28 ratings, 27 positive for Dems

This is a flood of delicious news. A flood.

Here are the Cook Political Report's latest race ranking changes.  

From "Solid Republican" to "Likely Republican":

AL-03, Mike Rogers
CA-46, Dana Rohrabacher
FL-09, Gus Bilirakis
FL-18, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
ID-01, Bill Sali
IN-03, Mark Souder
IA-04, Tom Latham
KY-02, Ron Lewis (open seat)
MN-02, John Kline
NE-02, Lee Terry
NV-02, Dean Heller
NJ-05, Scott Garrett
NC-10, Patrick McHenry
OH-07, Dave Hobson (open seat)
PA-05, John Peterson (open seat
PA-15, Charlie Dent
TX-07, John Culberson
TX-10, Michael McCaul
VA-05, Virgil Goode
VA-10, Frank Wolf
WY-AL, Barbara Cubin (open seat)

From Likely Republican to Lean Republican:

FL-08, Ric Keller
FL-21, Lincoln Diaz-Balart
PA-03, Phil English
WV-02, Shelley Moore Capito

From Toss Up to Lean Democratic:

NY-13, Vito Fossella (open seat)
NY-25, Jim Walsh (open seat)

From Likely Democratic to Lean Democratic:

PA-11, Paul Kanjorski

Wow.

That's an astonishing number of changes, first of all, but I'm equally amazed by the particular districts on this list. Most of the rating changes involve long-shot flanking races, the kind of races that would never be competitive in normal years, but happen to have unusually strong Democrats running this year, in an unusually favorable climate for Democrats. Some of these districts - like ID-01, IN-03, KY-02, NC-10, and TX-07 - are just wildly Republican, and many of them didn't even feature competitive races in 2006.

Many of those races added to the "Likely Republican" category won't be especially competitive this fall. But some of them will, and a few might even be Democratic pickups.

Even if it's just for this cycle, in the perfect storm of 2008, Democrats are making inroads into areas they have written off for years. The world is grown so good, it seems, that we are making prey where angels have long feared to tread.