With nearly all races called, it is now pretty apparent who will take the House, and roughly by what margin. You know the drill at this point that we're recapping races based off of what happened in the 2022 midterms (we've already done Senate and Governors), so let's jump right in, shall we?
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| House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) |
As of this article publishing there appears to be just two House races still uncalled (California's 13th and Colorado's 3rd). That puts the Republicans somewhere between 220-222 seats, a slim majority but a majority nonetheless (I personally suspect it'll end up being 222 with both of these races eventually going to the Republicans). The Democrats just got done with two years of their own majority that exact size and had rousing success with it, but the Republicans are in a position as a party where it's generally assumed that won't be possible. For starters, there's little indication that the GOP will be anything more than a "veto" against the Biden administration for the next two years, as a majority that slim will either need to have a series of discharge petitions or will require Marjorie Taylor Greene to back something that will have Joe Biden's name on it...that's a tall order.
I am one of the few people who think that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy will not struggle to get the requisite votes to become Speaker, even though his caucus clearly has some appetite to abandon him. McCarthy has shown a craven opportunism in the past two years that is bordering on the grotesque, giving in at every turn to Donald Trump, who has heartily endorsed his run for Speaker even if some Trump loyalists (specifically Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, & Ralph Norman) have made a point of calling for McCarthy to be replaced. As a result, I think he'll cash in every chip he has to get to a win on the first ballot...but it'll likely come at a cost. McCarthy is not Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi made running a caucus this size look easy, but it's not-you have to be willing to find common ground between a vast array of viewpoints and constituencies, and while he will be able to lead investigations into Biden administration figures & family members (specifically the president's son Hunter), it's hard to see him getting much else done. Already, he seems to be risking valuable capitol for no reason (pushing for Adam Schiff, Ilhan Omar, & Eric Swalwell to be removed from committees), which feels less about finding a path forward to actually govern & more about appeasing Greene. I've said this before, but while Pelosi is skilled, she also had serious people in her party to deal with-Cori Bush & Henry Cuellar are on the opposite ends of the Democratic Party spectrum, but at the end of the day they know that what's in common between them is worth more than what's not. People like Greene & Gaetz see far more value in disruption than compromise, and that'll put a bleak mark on McCarthy's tenure given the minuscule size of his majority. I'll stake a claim right now that I would be surprised if he's still Speaker on Election Day 2024.
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| House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) |
With the loss of her majority, Nancy Pelosi will end what has to be considered the most impressive run as Speaker of the House in the past 50 years, if not possibly the most impressive run of all-time. Pelosi is the true successor to LBJ in the Democratic Party, but while the latter got there through cutthroat cronyism, Pelosi oversaw a wealth of traditionally underrepresented communities in Congress, particularly women, become the driving force in her caucus. You could argue more than President Obama or Biden, she has profoundly shaped the way that the Democrats work in Washington.
It has to be noted that a pretty large component of how Pelosi lost the Speaker's gavel came from her beloved state of California. Assuming John Duarte wins the 13th district, five seats (enough to get her the majority) that Joe Biden won in 2020 went for Republicans in 2022. This is less on Pelosi, who in the waning days before the campaign was caring for her husband, the victim of an assassination attempt, and more on Gavin Newsom in my opinion. Newsom made a point of trying to gain a national name for himself the past few months in the wake of his successful recall election, running ads against Ron DeSantis & Greg Abbott. Rather than doing those ads (which went nowhere-Abbott & DeSantis won decisive reelections), he should've been staying home and paying attention to vulnerable Democrats in these five seats (and in Mike Levin's & Katie Porter's, as both nearly lost). Given his reelection was a foregone conclusion, spending much of it working GOTV efforts in these seven districts that his Republican opponent didn't have the money or cache to duplicate may well have won the Democrats the House...it certainly would've cost Kevin McCarthy any chance he had at the Speaker's gavel.
With Pelosi now out, Hakeem Jeffries will assume the position as House Minority Leader. Jeffries has been the heir apparent for a few years now, particularly after multiple Pelosi protégés went to the Senate (specifically Chris van Hollen & Ben Ray Lujan). Jeffries does not have the obvious ability that Pelosi had to merge both sides of his caucus (he has made disparaging remarks about members of "The Squad" in the past that he can't afford to do anymore), so it is not yet clear if he will be able to find a similar winning formula in an extremely diverse caucus. It's likely that Biden & Schumer will provide a strong counterargument to the McCarthy tenure in the House, but Jeffries will need to be part of it.
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| Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) |
It has to be remembered that most people, including me, never thought that the majority would be this close, and as a result, trying to point fingers at what was largely a good night for the Democrats (they literally only lost six incumbents last week) feels like silliness given that this is nearly a best case scenario. But it's pretty easy to see where Democrats lost their majority if you want to place blame, and while California was a big part of that math, no place abandoned progressives more than the Empire State of New York. The biggest loss there was Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the first DCCC Chair in decades to lose reelection (and during an otherwise strong night for Democrats), Maloney district-hopped in the hopes of getting an easier reelection, but he couldn't overcome the carpetbagger title & lost in one of the biggest upsets of the night.
Maloney wasn't the only New York Democrat to suffer. People have pointed out that the Democrats would've had a stronger map here were it not for a Cuomo-backed judge overruling their gerrymander (this is true), but it's not like Democrats were botching in Trump districts. In total, six districts (the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 17th, 19th, & 22nd) all elected Republicans to districts Joe Biden won in 2020, more than enough to get the Democrats the surprise of the century of holding the House. Maloney, Cuomo, & incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul deserve the blame here, all deeply unpopular in New York City, which made sure that Democratic support was soft in the otherwise blue state, and it cost them the Speaker's gavel. Hochul survived, though much of her political currency is now gone (if I'm Tish James, I've got my eyes set on her job in 2026), and Maloney will never hold elected office again after not only losing the House majority, but losing it in his own backyard...only in his own backyard.
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| Rep-Elect Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) |
Outside of California & New York, the Democrats largely had a good night, and were it not for those two states would've won the House in my opinion. A lot of that strength came through successfully navigating gerrymanders (both in & out of their favor). In Nevada & New Mexico, Democrats kept together potentially vulnerable redistricting maps that could've faltered in an actual red wave, and instead netted a seat. Democrats did the same in Illinois, and overcame a rough gerrymander in Ohio to actually net seats. Democrats held potentially vulnerable seats in Washington, Minnesota, Colorado, & Michigan thanks to a strong top-of-the-ticket, and the death of the Rio Grande Valley Democrats was greatly exaggerated, as both Reps. Vicente Gonzalez & Henry Cuellar took easy reelections in a region of the country that is quickly becoming more Republican.
Perhaps the most noted situation on Election Night, though, was the rejection of Republican extremism. This was felt in a strong way in the Senate (Blake Masters & Mehmet Oz both losing) and Governors (Tim Michels & Kari Lake both losing), but was also clearly a problem for Republicans in the House. For all of the hemming-and-hawing over whether it was appropriate for Democrats to go after Rep. Peter Meijer in the primary, it ended up being for the best. Meijer lost the primary, quickly got behind the MAGA extremist he was running against in in the primary (blaming the Democrats for his victory), and then Democrat Hillary Scholten, possibly the first born-again Evangelical to represent the Democratic caucus (she's also pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, for the record...an unusual combination of political beliefs), won. As a result, it was a trade-up for the Democrats and less a loss for the "moderate wing" of the Republican Party and more a case where the moderate wing simply has no place in the Republican Party.
Democrats duplicated this road to success in Washington's 3rd congressional district, the only open seat Trump district to go blue (all of the others had incumbent Democrats running), where another impeachment vote (Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler) lost in the primary and the MAGA candidate (Joe Kent) lost to a moderate Democrat (Marie Gluesenkamp Perez). This appears to be a winning formula-moderate Democratic women against extremist MAGA figures (Rep. Mary Peltola, who won reelection, did it in a special election earlier this year). Though Rep. Lauren Boebert probably will hold on, I suspect Democrats to try a similar tactic against her in two years.
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| Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA) |
Though it's too soon to know anything about 2024, there are a few absolutes we can utter right now. The first is that the Democrats, assuming the maps don't move, would start that year with a mild advantage. McCarthy didn't transform enough districts (this was arguably the biggest problem for Democrats in 2022-they had given up too much ground in 2020 while McCarthy won't have taken up enough) to have much gain from incumbency. In 2023, there will be 18 districts that went for Joe Biden that are held by House Republicans and six held by the Democrats that went to Trump. There's no guarantee these stay the same in 2024 (some of the districts will flip to the other side, with my eye in particular on some of the New York & California seats who may just have been opportunities for Biden because they were rejecting Trump more than embracing the left...though Biden could net seats in places like Michigan & Colorado under the new map), but this means that at least some of these seats are vulnerable in 2024.
I personally doubt we see a lot of rematches in these districts, to be honest. Normally I'd decline Republicans running for seats they lost after a midterm where the other party held the White House (if you can't win in this year, you can never win), though I think there's some room for Democrats to get some of their losers this cycle up again in two years & get them blue checkmarks. With the exception of State Rep. Rudy Salas (who ran a good campaign against Rep. David Valadao that probably carries him in a presidential election), the Democrats should totally skip out on the CA/NY candidates. Reps. Elaine Luria (VA) & Andy Levin (MI) would be worth pursuing again (both lost in 2022 but have a clear avenue with Biden at the top of the ticket in 2024), but otherwise I think mostly starting from scratch on the left, trying to find candidates more in the Gluesenkamp Perez/Peltola mold for marginal seats instead. On the Republican side, it would behoove them to have current representatives like Jaime Herrera Beutler & Peter Meijer make comebacks, but it's not clear how the NRCC would be able to get them successfully through a primary.
The biggest question for the GOP's chances might be how aggressive they can be in mid-decade gerrymanders. I expect that with key victories in the North Carolina & Ohio Supreme Courts that they will attempt to gerrymander further both states, as there are a number of newly-elected members they could go after if they were given free reign to do so. Countering that, Democrats could go back in certain states (New York, Maryland, & Minnesota spring to mind) to either shore up incumbents or make stronger plays to net seats as a maneuver to nullify those gains. And of course, the fate of the VRA is headed to an extremely conservative Supreme Court that may move to gut it. It's clear that the VRA as written should've gotten Democrats three more seats in Alabama, Louisiana, & Florida this cycle-will the Supreme Court agree...or will they try to gut the bill further to make it so that seats held by Terri Sewell, Bennie Thompson, & Troy Carter at risk? We shall see...
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