Charlie Cook, one of the more cautious and respected pollsters and political analysts, is now saying the Democrats will lose the House. Gerald Seib reports:

“I think Republicans are going to get the House back,” he said flatly in a conversation taped for WSJ.com’s “Big Interview” segment, which will be posted on the site Friday morning.

To be precise, Republicans need to win 39 Democratic seats to get control of the House, and Mr. Cook’s current estimate is that they are in line for a 35- to 45-seat gain. “But frankly, I think we’re being very conservative with that,” he added. “The odds of it being higher than that range are a lot better than lower.”

As Seib notes, maybe the Democrats finally will gin up their base. Perhaps, he offers, “Democrats might figure out how to do a better job convincing the nation of the wisdom of their policies.” Is that likely? No. And as we’ve seen this week with another round of awful jobs numbers and the Ground Zero debacle, things could very well get even worse.