THE CATCH-22 THAT WILL MAKE IT HARD FOR DEMOCRATS TO UNRIG AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Despite all the recent legal shenanigans that have probably handed a significant number of congressional seats to the GOP, it still seems unlikely that Republicans will retain control of the House. Nate Cohn writes:

... if everything stays as is — and with Alabama, South Carolina and Louisiana enacting new maps — Republicans will obtain a significant structural advantage. To win the House, Democrats could need to win the House combined national popular vote by around four percentage points, according to our estimates.

A four-point structural advantage wouldn’t be enough to make the Republicans favorites to win the House, but it gives them a real shot at it. In polling averages, Democrats lead by six points on the so-called generic congressional ballot, which asks voters which party they’ll support for Congress. But if Republicans make gains between now and November or pull off enough victories in key races, they could have a chance to retain control of the House even while losing the national vote by a significant margin.

I don't expect Republicans to "make gains between now and November" because I assume President Trump will continue to do nothing about affordability, while becoming ever more obsessed with self-aggrandizement. Trump will continue to be a blinkered fuck-up running an administration full of fuck-ups, and Republicans will suffer as a result.

And based on Democrats' performance in off-cycle elections since Trump was inaugurated, I think they'll beat Republicans in total congressional voting by more than six points. Yes, it worries me that Democrats' advantage on the generic ballot is much smaller than net disapproval of the president (Trump is underwater by 19 points right now, according to Nate Silver) -- but I think many normie voters literally don't associate Republican members of Congress and Republican congressional candidates with Trump, and as soon as Democratic campaign ads start linking those Republicans to Trump, Democrats' advantage will increase.

Democrats have had a golden opportunity in the past year or so to besmirch the entire GOP, but they haven't done it, and as a result, voters still favor Republicans on a number of issues, including issues on which voters acknowledge that Trump has been a dismal failure.

WaPo/ABC/Ipsos poll | 4/24-4/28

Which political party do you trust on the issues?

🟦Healthcare: D+17
🟦Education and schools: D+8
🟦Cost of living: D+5
🟦Iran: D+2
——
Corruption: Tied
——
🟥Economy: R+1
🟥Inflation: R+1
🟥Taxes: R+3
🟥Immigration: R+5
🟥Crime: R+14 https://t.co/3WLsUhiPWD pic.twitter.com/STNHkEQbHP

— Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 (@PollTracker2024) May 3, 2026

But it's election season, which means that all campaigning Democrats will temporarily point out that the Republican president is bad and is an ally of their Republican opponents. And that will work.

But winning the midterms -- and possibly winning big in 2028 -- will cause a problem for Democrats if they want to unrig American democracy: If they win, they'll be arguing that the system is rigged against them despite the fact that they were victorious. Republicans and the right-wing media will argue that Democrats aren't trying to right a wrong, because (they'll say) obviously Republicans haven't rigged the process -- what Democrats are really doing is rigging the system themselves.

And it's very easy to imagine pockets of the so-called liberal media agreeing with Republicans.

I know what you'll say to that: Democrats just need to be ruthless.

The problem is, we're hoping for that even though the Democrats who are likely to be in office after the 2028 election are, in many cases, the same timid souls who've failed to fight hard against the GOP all these years. They're also the same Democrats who haven't figured out how to out-message the GOP, a process that would need to begin with characterizing Republicans as an extremist hatemongering plutocrat party that worsens the condition of ordinary people when it's in power. (You'll say the Democrats are pro-plutocrat too, and there's truth in that, but please note that the right-wing plutocrats who bought themselves a federal bench over the past couple of decades certainly believe that the GOP represents their interests more than Democrats.)

And some newly elected Democrats could be quite moderate as well. Note that Republicans are eliminating Black-majority (and thus Democratic-majority) districts by spreading Black voters across what are believed to be majority-GOP districts, thus diluting the pro-GOP nature of those districts. If Democratic candidates steal a few of these seats, they're likely to be centrist Democrats, and votes for bills seen as very partisan will be regarded as putting these "frontline" Democrats at risk in subsequent election cycles.

So I don't expect a radical reordering even if Democrats win the White House and both houses of Congress in 2028. Democrats are likely to proceed slowly, and Washington is likely to respond to even those moderate moves by hitting the fainting couches.

Democrats need a plan for dealing with all this -- and I hope they have one.