Blood bath. Wipe out. Catastrophe. Tea Party redux.

Political pundits are using these terms to predict the defeat of progressive forces in the November congressional elections in which the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate are being contested.

Why the grim forecast? The odds seem to be against progressives. Many of our progressive incumbents with strong re-election prospects are retiring. The Tea Party, after its multistate sweep of 2010, gerrymandered election districts so heavily that it will be almost impossible to overcome the voting consequences of their redistricting.

A May Pew Research survey shows Republicans lead Democrats 47 percent to 43 percent as America’s choice of who should control Congress. That does not bode well.

Despite its success today, the disastrous website rollout of the Affordable Care Act accompanied by all the old scare tactics labeling it socialized medicine has upset, frightened and confused a sizable portion of the electorate. Nonunion seniors, unfortunately, have become a safe group for our opponents’ fear tactics and they can be relied on to turn out to vote.

Midterm elections historically often see the defeat of the incumbent president’s political party. Think Eisenhower in 1958, LBJ in 1966, Clinton in 1994, Bush in 2006 and Obama in 2010. It’s the ins being knocked out.

Why does the electorate so often vote against its own interests? Some issue comes along that trumps all the other issues. In 1984, polls showed that especially on economic issues, American voters sided with Walter Mondale. Yet they voted overwhelmingly to re-elect Ronald Reagan because they perceived something in him that Mondale lacked.

Right-wing scare tactics aimed at health care, foreign policy, immigration, unemployment, economic recovery and government as a tool for social good have created an aura of gloom and doom across the country. And since voter turnout is generally lower in the off years (except for committed Tea Party voters), the cloud of doom works to their advantage.

Our anti-labor, anti-progressive opponents are clever. Backed by the deep pockets of the Koch brothers and by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that gives them free rein, they have persistently sought to defeat, block and denigrate any possible achievements by this administration.

For them it is better to leave national crises such as immigration reform and income inequality unresolved rather than to give any credit to the president or his supporters. And rather than just opposing the progressive accomplishments of the past century, many of them bipartisan accomplishments, they are out to dismantle and destroy them.

As my predecessor, Tom Pappas, reminds us, “The bad guys never go away.”

What can you and I do in the face of such a daunting challenge? We’ll explore that in next edition of the paper.

Stay tuned.