Small Majority
Here we are, nearly three weeks after election day…and we’re still not sure of the breakdown of the U.S. House…but close.
Recall that going into the fall, Democrats held 222 seats in the chamber, with Republicans at 213. Two Florida Democrats resigned in September, one to focus on running for governor, the other to take a new job…so as things stand today, it’s 220-213.
At best, it looks like the Republicans will have a majority in the chamber…with 222 seats, leaving the Democrats with the remaining 213. That’s a four-seat majority for the GOP…meaning they can lose four votes on any issue and still have a 218-vote majority.
So after all this fussing and fighting, redistricting and campaigning…and for all the talk about how weak the Democrats were with such a slim majority…the numbers going forward will be exactly the same—222 to 213—but with a flip of who is in power.
That’s a GOP pick up of 9—and yes, that’s a majority, but it’s only a 9 seat pickup during a midterm election with the president being from the other party, during record inflation, and general dissatisfaction across the country. Never mind the fact that it’s a far cry from the 20, 30, 50 seat pickups that had been forecast. It was 9.
There’s hardly any way to spin this. Yes, being the party in the majority is far better than being the party in the minority. But the GOP is hardly unified, organized, or with purpose.
Remember that the Electoral College (based on apportionment of popular vote) selected a Democrat in 2012, a Republican in 2016, and Democrat in 2020. The U.S. Senate was 50-50 in 2020, and will either stay there or be 51-49 after 2022. And now the U.S. House, a bare GOP majority and no different an advantage than Democrats had the last two years.
At some point, political pros might wake up to figure out that neither party is representing the interests of citizens…otherwise, one of them would catch fire with voters. But so long as they themselves are still keeping power in some way, they probably don’t care.
