What’s more, if politics is at least in part a game of expectations, the Democrats are not going to do as well as most of them expect and all of them hope. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) may get to pick out drapes for her new offices, but the giddy expectation that her party will gain the 30 to 40 seats some of her colleagues and their friends in the media have been predicting are not likely to be met. She is much more likely to sneak into the speakership with a razor-thin majority that will include a number of “moderate” freshmen who won by swearing that they don’t share her values and won’t increase taxes, spend the nation into bankruptcy, further liberalize our abortion laws or launch a new assault on gun owners.
Indeed, if her party wins control of the House, she is likely to face the same sorts of problems Republican Congressional leaders have had to confront over the last few Congresses knowing that a few “moderates” within their party were in a position to make or break them. As a result, they found themselves spending an inordinate amount of time and effort tailoring legislation to accommodate the desires and whims of folks like Connecticut Republican Reps. Nancy Johnson and Christopher Shays just to keep their majority together.
Their leverage within their party’s caucus was traceable to the slim majority with which GOP leaders were forced to work and the fear that unless moderates were accommodated, they could lose their seats and with those seats would go the majority. In many cases that fear was exaggerated, but there was enough to it to give them influence far exceeding their numbers within the House GOP caucus.
Assuming it wins control today, the new House Democratic leadership will face the same problems, because while the GOP in the next Congress is likely to be more ideologically homogenous, the candidates the Democrats recruited this time around, and the campaign pledges those candidates made, will temper or frustrate the liberals their election will put into the House leadership.