a brawl for american democracy…
Predicting races for Congress is a dangerous business for any pundit after Donald Trump’s three runs for the White House in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Trump’s win in 2026 was a squeaker over Hillary Rodham Clinton. Then, the Democrats staged a takeover of the House in 2018, but then Democrats lost seats in 2020 when polls predicted a significant gain instead. Not to mention the Joe Biden-Donald Trump presidential election of 2020, and the non-existent “red wave” expected in Congress in 2022 and Trump’s trouncing of Joe Biden/Kamala Harris in 2024 where he got to have his cake and eat it too by winning the White House, and majority control in the United States Senate and the U.S. House.
House seats are far more susceptible to the whims of the electorate than are Senate seats, and there are a lot of both in play in this next election cycle, just as in years past. Trump’s troubling, frustrating Tweets already hurt more in the Senate than in the House which was similar during his first term in office. It was the same with the impact of the pandemic, the protests and social upheaval, and the staggering unemployment that plagued Trump 45’s era. Joe Biden had to contend during his four years in the Oval Office with wars, inflation, immigration, Hunter’s legal woes, age, and various other issues.
Will President Trump prove, over time, to be far more unpopular among critical segments of the public than he had been in previous years, especially among college- and non-college-educated whites, people of color, older adults, and a wide variety of other challenges?
The question is: Will Republicans be able to hold the House in 2026, or does someone else have a chance at being called Mr. or Madam Speaker in 2027?
An Unmanageable Margin
The slim vote margin among Republican and Democrat members following the 2024 elections means that the U.S. House of Representatives is completely dysfunctional in the 119th Congress. There have been many examples of dysfunction. Too many different factions are competing for their opposing positions, and that is just among Republican members.
Chaos reigns.
Congress has not been able to pass individual spending authorizations as required by the Congressional budget process; thus, there is a frequent and all-too-consistent need to lump spending into continuing resolutions, or CRs, as they are known on the Hill.
With Speaker McCarthy out in 2023, the House was paralyzed for three remarkable weeks while the Republican Caucus rejected speaker candidate after speaker candidate. First rejected was Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), followed by Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) and then Jim Jordan (R-OH). It was learned that the Republican leadership was not trusted by the opposing Gaetz team.
Democrats were unanimous in their preference for Congressman Hakeem Jefferies (D-NY), their current Minority Leader, as their choice for Speaker, which did not help the Republicans overcome their factional civil war.
In the end, a relatively unknown and inexperienced member was ultimately elected Speaker by a finally unanimous Republican Conference, reeling under withering public criticism from Republicans, Democrats, and Independents who were calling out the House lawmaking paralysis.
A New Speaker for the Times
Then-four-term (now five-term) Congressman Mike Johnson (R-LA) was sworn in as Speaker and immediately saw his honeymoon period ended when, like McCarthy, he had to rely on Democrats’ votes to successfully approve Continuing Resolutions to keep the federal government open until early 2024.
During the three-week House drama, in which House business could not be conducted other than the search for a Speaker, the Israeli-Hamas War broke out, and fighting between Russia and Ukraine intensified, both without emergency funding support from Congress.
The culture wars raged on, as did the internal strife between Trump-supporting GOP members and those GOP members from more moderate districts who did not believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen from the 45th president of the United States by the 46th president of the United States.
2024 was, predictably, a mess, too, and perhaps the 119th Congress will as well.
Budgets still need to be passed, and wars need to be contained. The list of challenges, like rampant immigration and evolving climate change, is not getting resolved and is not likely to get resolved when members of both parties will undoubtedly be focused on re-election and control of the House of Representatives in January 2027.
And the House, now under a microscope, will have to decide how much or how little it will permit Donald Trump to ignore constitutional norms and operate an imperial presidency or other.
The Thomas Watch
Thomas is watching two groups of people in the U.S. House. What happens to them and what they ultimately do has enormous consequences for American democracy.
The first group we are watching are those election deniers who are, to put it politely, obstructing productive lawmaking or engaging in anti-democratic activities, in our opinion.
thomas invites you to see our rankings on:
the democracy stars & failures by state
The second group we are watching are members in highly competitive seats that may or may not determine who manages the U.S. House of Representatives in 2027. They are:
Arizona 01, 04, 06
California 40, 41, 45, 47, 49
Colorado 08
Connecticut 05
Florida 27, 28
Georgia 03
Illinois 6, 13, 17
Indiana 01
Iowa 01, 03
Kansas 03
Kentucky 04
Maryland 06
Michigan 03, 07, 08, 10
Minnesota 02
Nebraska 02
Nevada 01, 03, 04
New Hampshire 01, 02
New Jersey 07
New Mexico 02
New York, 01, 02, 03, 17, 18, 19, 22
North Carolina 01
Ohio 01, 09, 13
Oregon 05
Pennsylvania 01, 07, 17
Texas 15, 28
Virginia 02, 07
Washington 03, 08
Wisconsin 01
Keep an eye out here. We will keep you posted.