July 19: Giving Up on the White House to Save the U.S. House Is a Bad Idea
Plenty of good and bad ideas are popping up in this summer of Democratic anxiety, but it’s one of the latter I tried to knock down at New York:
Coming out of the agonizing intra-Democratic debate about Joe Biden’s fitness to beat Donald Trump is a sort of plan B scheme. Donors, we are told, are considering shifting resources to an effort to flip control of the House (just four seats away) in order to block a Trump-led Republican trifecta and a bacchanalia of authoritarian extremism next year. The reigning assumption is that absent a presidential win (which provides the tie-breaking vote in the Senate), maintaining Democratic control of the upper chamber will be almost impossible, since Republicans are sure to flip West Virginia, and all the other competitive races are on Democratic turf. So making Hakeem Jeffries House Speaker offers the best return on investment and perhaps relief from the agony of watching Biden like a hawk every time he’s on-camera.
It’s an interesting strategy but not terribly promising from a historical point of view. The last time House control flipped in a presidential-election year was in 1952, when Republicans benefited from a presidential landslide. The last six times House control has flipped (in 1954, 1994, 2006, 2010, 2018, and 2022), it’s happened in midterm elections featuring a very common backlash against the president’s party. You know how often a party has lost the White House and flipped the U.S. House in the same election? Zero times. There were times when Senate races (with their highly eccentric landscapes thanks to only one-third of seats being up in any one election) moved in a very different direction from the presidential election. But the House has always been harnessed to White House results in fundamental and even predictable ways, as political scientist David Faris points out:
“Political scientist Robert Erikson found in 2016 that for ‘every percentage point that a presidential candidate gains in the two-party vote, their party’s down-ballot candidates gain almost half a point themselves.’ A 1990 study by James E. Campbell and Joe A. Sumners found that for every 10 points that a presidential candidate gains in a state, it boosts that party’s Senate contender by 2 points, and its House hopefuls by 4. This basic logic is a large part of why the past five presidents brought congressional majorities into office with them when they were elected to their first term.”
And most of this historical record, mind you, was forged in the bygone era of relatively nonideological major parties that made ticket-splitting immensely more common. House Democrats entered the 2024 cycle optimistic about making gains since 16 Republicans are in districts carried by Biden in 2020 while only five Democrats are in Trump ’20 districts. But as J. Miles Coleman of Sabato’s Crystal Ball observes, an even Biden-Trump race in the national popular vote would turn six Democratic-held House districts red. A 3.3 percent Trump advantage in the national popular vote (his margin in the polling averages Coleman was using) would turn 19 Democratic-held House districts red.
Flipping the House if Biden loses decisively is hard to imagine. Even now, with polls showing a close presidential race, all of the major House prognosticators give Republicans a slight advantage (Cook Political Report, for example, shows the GOP favored in 210 races and Democrats favored in 203, with 22 toss-ups, half of them currently controlled by each party). The congressional generic ballot, polling that estimates the House national popular vote, is dead even (on average, Democrats lead by 0.5 percent in FiveThirtyEight, Republicans by 0.3 percent in RealClearPolitics). This will be an uphill fight for Democrats in the best of circumstances. And it should be remembered that Biden’s party lost 13 net House seats in 2020 even as he won the White House.
History, current analysis, and common sense indicate that abandoning the presidential ticket to focus on House races as though they are isolated contests is a fool’s errand for Democrats. Whether it’s Biden, Kamala Harris, or some improbable fantasy candidate heading the ticket, the presidential race needs to stay highly competitive if Democrats want to make House gains. If Trump rides back into the White House with a solid win, his toady Mike Johnson will almost certainly be there to help him turn his scary plans into legislation.
Jim:
I honestly don’t think anybody’s dancing in the end zone right now. The current cautious optimism about Obama’s prospects is a nice antidote to the panic and despair that were so evident among Democrats a month ago, when McCain was up in many polls, and there was even evidence that Republican congressional candidates were suddenly doing a lot better.
Looking at objective evidence, positive or negative, is what we try to do here at TDS, though obviously our own partisan feelings come into play. Today is one of those days when there’s a lot of good news to report. But I doubt anyone fails to understand that there’s a lot of work still to be done, and risks to confront, particularly now that the McCain campaign may be getting desparate enough to conduct the nastiest negative campaign in memory.
Thanks for the comment.
I hate to be a downer this morning, but on many blogs, and the precious few liberal talk shows, there’s a lot of celebrating going on. This is NOT over. We have a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of evidence out there that the GOP is going to tamper with the vote like no other time. They’re desperate, resembling a cornered animal.
PLEASE think for a moment what they’re going to lose IF they lose this election. They will lose the Supreme Court for decades, one of the biggest goals of the last 50 years. They will likely have to endure (if there’s ANY justice in this Universe) many, many probes into illegal activities born from this administration and Cheney’s reign of error (this could result in prison for some and a minority status for 20 years).
Do you actually believe that THIS regime of Neo-Con-backed politicos will simply roll over and accept the will of the people wielding simple votes?
They detest US. They’ll stop at nothing. We have work to do. Be realistic. Make calls. Talk to everyone. Volunteer. Anticipate the OCTOBER surprise.
Only THEN celebrate on Nov. 5 after a win and there are no challenges in the courts.