In March 2017 when I started writing this blog I did a piece titled “House Math”, about what had given Republicans dominance in the House of Representatives in our era and what it would take for Democrats to regain the House.
That post noted and in fact rested particularly on the Republican Party’s vise-like grip on the congressional districts of the Confederacy, the 11 states that seceded from the Union in 1861. There in the confederate south, except for seats gerrymandered into minority — African-American dominant districts — Republicans held an enormous 60-seat advantage after the 2016 elation. It got dented by several seats in the recent mid-term but that is not where the sea change occurred or where it has to be maintained for Democrats to lock in most of the gains they made two weeks ago.
One of the places they’ll need to hold the new gains is my state, New Jersey, where a 7-to-5 Democratic balance in the House delegation is now going to be a startling 11-to-1, the largest since the 1912 election that sent the only New Jerseyan ever elected president to the White House (Woodrow Wilson, who really was a Virginian in all ways, especially his racial views — having been born there and having incorporated in his belief system Virginia’s Jim Crow racism in his time).
With Wilson winning the White House that year Democrats won 10 of 12 New Jersey seats in the House, the same number it has today (in 1964 the state had a population ranking that gave it 17 house seats, its greatest number historically — a delegation size that shrunk back to 12 as other states passed or equaled the Garden State in population and population rank.)
Among other things in this blog’s March 2017 piece about what it would take for Democrats to overcome Republicans’ built-in southern dominance, I made this observation:
“Orange County, California, has 3 million people spread over six congressional districts, five held by Republicans. In 1980 it gave Ronald Reagan 67% of its votes for president. In 2016, Orange County gave Hillary Clinton 51% of its votes for president. All those oranges? They are ripe for the picking (and, homage to Lin Manuel, we all know who does the picking).
For Democrats looking for a path to House control outside the south, the road goes right into and through places like Orange County.”
And it did. Those six Orange County districts? As of Nov. 16, with the call of the last of those contests, all of Orange County will be represented in Congress by Democrats — a county where the major airport is named for the famous actor/right-wing partisan John Wayne — will send six Democrats and no Republicans to the House.
Say again? Yep, you read it right — six Democrats and no Republicans will serve in the new House from Orange County, Calif.
Orange County, once the very heart of Reagan country in California, thus propelled five of the 36 Democratic gains in the House in the 2018 election. Because of this, when all is said, done and counted, among California’s 53 House members, 14 of whom were Republicans heading into the election, there will be at least 44 Democrats and just 8 Republicans with one race pending.
The first bg test for House Democrats? Especially for the new ones including those new five from Orange County and new four from New Jersey who, together, comprise 25% of the Democrats’ House gain?
The first is the test of political comprehension and sense that some are already failing eight weeks before they even take office. It’s learning the ropes, learning the lessons conferred by their seniors in the Democratic Caucus and learning how the House works if it does, when it does.
Who knows that best and is best positioned to lead them to success rather than them stupidly fracturing the way comparable Republican majorities did in the past decade? Who knows it so well as, in their times, the greatest House speakers, Speaker Joseph Cannon, Speaker Sam Rayburn, Speaker John McCormick and Speaker Thomas “Tip”O’Neill knew it?
The answer is another House Democrat from California, from San Francisco in fact. Yes, Nancy Pelosi. Every one of the new Democratic members needs to understand why they have to vote for her on the floor of the House Jan. 3, 2019 or put themselves on the road to political perdition.
They will risk giving away the House majority they just gained if they obstruct her return to the speakership. They will put themselves on the road to losing many of the seats gained in New Jersey and Orange County this year.
Why? Because to win reelection these New Democrats and the New Democratic majority need to produce a sensible legsilative program. Never mind that Republicans will block it in the Senate or that Trump would veto most of it. They have to show they can govern and do what Republicans have not been able to do — pass sensible, forward-looking legislation because before investigating is their job, legislating is their job.
There is no one else who can lead a quarrelsome, substantially inexperienced, remarkably politically, ethnically, racially and ideologically diverse caucus as the Democrats will be — to a comprehensive legislative agenda on climate/environment, immigration/DACA, education, fiscal and revenue policy, voting and civil rights, economic fairness and — most importantly because they all ran on it — health coverage and cost, and get that agenda passed.
Getting the votes to do that requires knowing how to herd cats. Pelosi is a cat herder — a proven cat herder.
With anyone else as speaker –and no one even knows who that other putative speaker would or could be — the Democrats’ caucus will fracture, splinter, point fingers and watch a left equivalent of the right-wing Freedom Caucus emerge that, in like fashion, will wreck their new majority and their ability to act with cohesion.
If the never-Pelosi bunch don’t get over their snit, get real and elect her Speaker with a minimum of division on the House floor Jan. 3, you can be sure in two years there will be a reprise in which readers are reminded of the immediately preceding paragraphs.
Democrats will have, it seems now, 236 or 237 House members on Jan. 3 of whom 218 must vote for Pelosi to elect her speaker. She should have the votes of all Democrats when the House makes that choice on the floor although a handful are likely to sit on their hands (perhaps not quite yet understanding how beholden all member are to speakers/ leaders for prime office space, budgets, committee assignments — all that good stuff they like to write home about).
Those who oppose her because they said they would in their campaigns can do that in the caucus. When they get to the floor they owe it to the caucus, the House, the nation for sure, and themselves to vote for Pelosi if they want to get anything done and lest Orange County revert to red in 2020.
Peeling the Onion 