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The race for the White House is settled: Donald Trump won a second term. The race for control of the U.S. Senate is also settled: Though we don’t yet know exactly how big the Republicans’ majority will be, the party has already secured enough seats to take back the chamber.
And then there’s the U.S. House — where the picture isn’t yet clear.
As I type, according to NBC News’ latest tally, Republicans have won 211 seats, while Democrats have won 200. A majority is 218 seats, which means that Democrats will need to prevail in at least 18 of the remaining 24 contests.
Is that possible? Yes. Is it likely? Not really. Either way, as NBC News’ Sahil Kapur summarized, the race for control of the chamber is “headed for a photo finish.”
But let’s say for the sake of conversation that Democrats fall a little short of their goal, and the current GOP majority hangs on. PunchBowl News’ summary of the landscape emphasized an important point:
[I]f Republicans do hold onto power — and it seems like they will — Speaker Mike Johnson will again be forced to govern with a paper-thin majority. Most top Republicans and Democrats say the GOP will end up with between 218 and 221 House seats. It’s even possible that they end up with 218 seats on the nose. This will once again make it extraordinarily difficult for Johnson to do almost everything, ranging from passing a House rules package, to clearing a budget resolution, to passing the complicated tax-cut extension that President-elect Donald Trump is so eager to sign into law.
Quite right. We know what happens when this House GOP conference tries to govern with a tiny margin in the House because that’s precisely what we’ve seen for the last two years.
And by any fair measure, the past two years have been a humiliating failure for House Republicans, not just because of their misguided priorities and right-wing extremists, but because the GOP advantage in the chamber is so small that the party has struggled to complete even the most basic legislative tasks. Republicans haven’t even been able to pass some of their own bills, which House Democrats were powerless to stop.
Earlier this year, a Punchbowl News report concluded, “This is the most chaotic, inefficient and ineffective majority we’ve seen in decades covering Congress.” In the months that followed, conditions deteriorated further.
To be sure, Republicans would welcome this problem, because the alternative is being in the minority. What’s more, the broader dynamic might be a little different in the next Congress because of Trump barking orders from the White House, rather than Mar-a-Lago.
But the bottom line remains the same: The House GOP has spent two years mired in a shambolic mess of its own making. The next two years might very well offer more of the same.