Grim Dems await huge House losses

"People think the system is broken, and no one's addressing it," says former Missouri Sen. Jim Talent, who says the viewpoint spans Republican rule, too. "The voters feel that there are big obvious things that the government should be dealing with but that it's not dealing with, that the politicians aren't dealing with and should be."

Republicans could gain the 40 seats they need for House control, following Democratic gains of 55 seats over 2006 and 2008.

If the GOP succeeds, it would mark only the fourth time in nearly a century that either the Democrats or Republicans won 20 or more House seats in three straight cycles.

The U.S. has been at war nearly a decade and is recovering from the recession. The nation is becoming far more diverse. Seemingly everything about how people live has changed in just a few years ago.

"It's about fear," said Michael Ford, the founding director of Xavier University's Institute for Politics and the American Dream. What they've lost confidence in is every institution that's supposed to safeguard that, the government, church, business, even sports."

"It's not going to come back simply by changing a couple of players on the chess board," he added. "The election is a quick fix. It's psychological, it's not real."