It is now generally accepted that Republicans will keep the House in November and "win" the midterm by adding a handful of seats to their majority. If this counts as "winning," Nancy Pelosi must already be stocking up on the champagne.
The battle for the Senate has so dominated this midterm cycle that the House has become an afterthought. Republicans keep telling themselves that all that matters is getting Mitch McConnell back into the majority leader's seat, so a united GOP Congress can move to roll back the Obama agenda.
Senate control is the priority, but the House deserves far more attention than it's getting. John Boehner has his majority, but it is not often a governing (or governable) one. The speaker endlessly struggles to get to that magic number 218, often to his embarrassment and the detriment of good policy. (A favorite: the House's stubborn refusal to accept his 2012 tax-cliff deal, which set up President Obama for an even greater tax-hike victory). Every additional member Mr. Boehner adds to his majority means additional flexibility in the coming Obama fights. It's also a cushion against future losses.
And this is the year to do it. The party in the spring announced it was driving for 245 seats, up from 233, and described this as "ambitious." Really? Republicans were obviously never going to replicate anywhere near their 63-seat pickup of 2010. Then again, President Obama's approval rating is subterranean, even in solidly blue districts, and voters are fed up with ObamaCare, the economy, foreign policy, executive overreach and pretty much everything else Democrats are doing.
Adding a dozen House seats in this environment might be considered a gimme. Yet the latest betting is that Republicans will get only three to eight seats. Meaning, a blowout night for the GOP still lands it with a smaller majority than it had in 2010.
Party officials offer reasons for the puny numbers. They note that the huge GOP victory in 2010, and the redistricting that followed, gave the party ownership over pretty much every conservative seat in Congress. The Democratic Blue Dogs are all but extinct. Georgia's John Barrow is, literally, the last, white elected House Democrat in the Deep South, and a few other last holdouts in conservative seats—Utah's Joe Matheson and North Carolina's Mike McIntyre —are retiring. The easy "gets" have been got, which means the GOP must battle for seats in more liberal districts, in more liberal states—California, New York, Illinois.
The House Republican team, like its counterpart in the Senate, is also getting beaten on fundraising. The left's dollar advantage has allowed Democrats to throw money at races the party knows it can't win—simply to force Republicans to spend their more precious dollars defending candidates. And it has allowed Democrats to outspend Republicans in competitive races.
There is truth in these points, though a bigger truth is that Republicans failed this summer to articulate an agenda that would make them more competitive in tougher districts. The president has painted Republicans as nothing more than obstructionists, and that image has stuck. It makes no difference that the House has passed scores of bills that are languishing in the Senate. The voting public doesn't know about them, or by extension what the House Republicans would accomplish if granted a larger majority.
Mr. Boehner made his "Five Points for Resetting America's Economic Foundation" so broad—"address the debt," "strengthen education"—as to be meaningless. What Democrat isn't also running on strengthening education?
Nancy Pelosi won the House in 2006 on a small yet concrete set of promises—raising the minimum wage, cheaper student loans, etc. House Republicans aren't exactly lacking in topics for which they could have laid out an agenda of reasonable policy changes—on ObamaCare, energy, regulations. Instead the party rolled out its candidates with nada, and has been left to claim it is good that their people are running on "local" issues. It is—for Democrats.
Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are thrilled for their incumbents to talk local, since it allows them to avoid talking about their Washington failures. It also allows Democrats to make campaigns about personality, which always favor the incumbent, and which has led to smear attacks that have been deadly for many Republican challengers.
The result is at least a dozen races—potentially more—in which Republican incumbents or challengers should be winning or at least competitive, but who are instead struggling or have been written off. While many of these seats are in "tough" states, many are in districts that Republicans have won in the past—and ought to be winnable in this climate.
They are also in districts that Republicans will need to convert to their side, if they are ever to increase their majority. The pity is that doesn't look to be happening in a midterm that is ripe for the winning.
