With the ideologically heterogeneous majority they’ve got, Democratic leadership will find it easier to forge legislative coalitions.
Nobody understands better than Republicans how impossibly frustrating it is to govern with small congressional majorities.
North Dakota Governor Kelly Armstrong, a GOP representative from 2019 to 2024, described the phenomenon in a candid 2023 NPR interview. “There’s a small group of members in our conference who have a unique and, quite frankly, enviable political position,” he said:
They win when they lose. If they lose to the Democrats, they can blame the left. If they lose to the Senate, they’ll blame the swamp. If they lose to Republicans, they’ll blame the establishment. And they’ll continue down that path without ever actually having the responsibility of having to govern.
For the better part of a decade, the GOP had struggled with the outsized influence of its most uncompromising members. Although they were small in number and unrepresentative relative to the broader electorate, this bloc within the Republican conference was empowered to gum up the works, make unreasonable demands of leadership, and exact concessions that elementary political prudence would militate against.
With political handicappers forecasting a modest Democratic majority in the House earlier this week — somewhere between 227 and 241 seats, depending on the forecaster — it seemed as though the Democratic Party was destined to experience a similar torment. But that was before Donald Trump’s 2024 coalition was Raptured into oblivion.
It will take some time before we get our hands around the scope of the Democratic Party’s victories last night. As of this writing, Democrats have flipped 30 seats in the lower chamber of Congress. At the end of the day, CBS News forecasts a possible 259-seat Democratic majority. That aligns with NBC News’s forecast, which sees an 81-seat cushion beneath House Democrats come January.
Republicans have every reason to take this news badly. But there’s a silver lining for the GOP in the Democratic Party’s massive majorities. Ultimately, they may have a moderating influence on the governing party.
If the Democratic majority were smaller, the party’s growing bloc of outright socialists would have the whip hand. But with the large, geographically diverse, ideologically heterogeneous majority they’ve got, Democratic leadership will find it easier to forge legislative coalitions. They will be able, if they’re so inclined, to resist the temptation to appease the radicals in their midst by crafting showpiece “comprehensive” bills that promise to rewrite the American social compact, knowing full well that it’s a free shot on goal and Trump will veto anything they pass. The breadth of the Democratic House majority will compel the socialists themselves to compromise with factions in their caucus who are less skeptical of markets and don’t share their naked contempt for Western civilization.
At least, that’s what establishmentarian Democrats hope. “Democrats are making moves to try to secure a big enough House majority to sideline blocs of both progressive and moderate holdouts who could cause constant headaches for Hakeem Jeffries if he becomes speaker next year,” Politico reported early last month.
Well, Democrats got their wish. They might even make the most of it.