Congressional dysfunction.

Congress chooses chaos. 

Gallup: 17% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing.   

Congress' disfunction is glaringly apparent.  Depending on the issues at stake, somewhere between six and 20 House Republicans prefer to shut down the government rather than accept a spending bill that does not include major spending cuts to popular programs, changes to policy on the southern border, ending aid to Ukraine, and defunding of Department of Justice prosecutions of Trump -- actions which have no hope of passing the Senate. Their deeper goal is burn-it-down re-ordering of the federal government. This group made the Speaker's job impossible for John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and now Kevin McCarthy. 

Boehner

Ryan

McCarthy

McCarthy won the Speakership by making concessions to the most adamant half-dozen of his caucus. They demanded too much. Policies popular in deep red Districts like that of Matt Gaetz in the Florida panhandle are toxic in swing Districts held by Republicans. One of these would be in Oregon, the newly drawn 5th District, in which the winner, Lori Chevez-DeRemer, won by 2% in a district won by Biden. 

Chevez-DeRemer

Her District has a 5% Democratic edge. Nothing would be better for a Democratic challenger than for the GOP incumbent to be stuck defending both Trump and participation in a GOP majority that shut down the government, fought to cut Social Security, and tried to defund the Department of Justice. She is trying to avoid looking like one of the nihilists. She voted to retain McCarthy and she said she was "disappointed some members just voted to paralyze the House.”

Democrats could have bailed out McCarthy if a dozen or so of their members had voted to join the 200-plus Republicans who voted for McCarthy. Democrats did not. McCarthy isn't a compromise Speaker. He may be more "reasonable" than Jim Jordan or some other successor to McCarthy, but at key points McCarthy planted his flag alongside Trump, total war with Democrats, and chaos being better than governance. He spoke out against Trump in the aftermath of January 6, but then decided to build the House GOP around Trump. That validated and enabled Trump, who now eggs on the very people making McCarthy's job impossible.

Democrats would have validated McCarthy had they thrown him a lifeline. If Republicans are going to become even more extreme and dysfunctional, led by members representing the brightest of bright red Districts, let them, Democrats figure. They will lose their majority. 

Could House Democrats form a majority with a centrist coalition government? I could imagine this. It would be good politics for Democrats to tighten the southern border, something Republicans want and a growing number of Democrats, too. Democrats could never allow cuts to Social Security or Medicare, but a growing number of Democrats favor a tilt back toward budget discipline. Democrats cannot abandon their messaging on climate, but there is more drilling, fracking, and petroleum produced today, under Biden, than there was in the hey-day of the pre-Covid Trump administration. I could imagine that in exchange for some policy changes and sharing of committee chairmanships that a coalition government might make policy sense.

It would not, however, make political sense. Republicans who compromised with Democrats would face a primary fight. Democrats who conceded on core Democratic policies would face a primary fight, too. That 5th Congressional District became vulnerable to a Republican because the prior Democratic incumbent, a "Blue Dog" centrist who opposed Medicare negotiating lower prices, lost a contested primary to Jamie McCloud-Skinner, who represented a purer form of progressive Democratic thinking. She then lost the general election

I hear some Democrats credit Joe Manchin for his votes on judges, impeachment, health care, and infrastructure. He represents a mostly-rural, mostly-White, coal-producing state, that voted overwhelmingly for Trump. What more could Democrats ask for? They ask for more. He will get primaried if he runs for re-election.

We are unlikely to see a coalition House. Primary voters want what they want. I expect the House will find an unstable GOP-led majority, which will flirt with government shutdowns, aborted efforts to impeach Biden, uncertainty over whether we will support Ukraine, and very public infighting. The radical members of any GOP majority are incentivized to go on TV to share their dissatisfaction. Conservative media is incentivized to show GOP drama. People will see dysfunction. They might blame Biden, but I expect more of the blame to fall on the GOP in Congress

Then, as Democrats hope, people in the 50 or so competitive Congressional Districts will vote to give Democrats a big enough majority that they can govern again. 

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