The GOP could hold the House speaker's gavel through 2020. The Democrats' lost decade?

Democrats fell far short of winning the House in 2012, an otherwise banner year for the party, and many are privately glum about taking back the chamber in 2014.

But that grim immediate outlook raises a far more troubling longer-term prospect for Democrats: that the newly drawn congressional lines have tilted the electoral playing field so decisively in the GOP’s favor that the party could control the House through 2020.


That this, in other words, could be the Democrats’ Lost Decade.

Three of the past four elections have produced partisan upheaval, so political forecasting must be approached with caution. Democrats say projecting beyond next year, let alone next month, is a fool’s errand.

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But strategists in both parties say they are still reckoning with the long-term implications of Democrats’ disastrous performance in 2010. Not only did they lose the House that year, but setbacks in state capitals meant that Republicans controlled the once-a-decade process of line drawing in 213 districts — nearly five times the number of districts Democrats had oversight over. And Republicans used that power with a vengeance.

The GOP effectiveness in erecting a gerrymandered fortress has created a paradox: Even in a fast-changing electorate, with many demographic trends favoring Democrats, the part of the national government that the Founders imagined would be most responsive to shifts in public opinion and voter behavior may actually be the least responsive.

The possibility of a decade or more of GOP House dominance is something Democrats – and even some Republicans, who still need to hit up donors – are loathe to talk about publicly. But make no mistake: Even as they struggle in presidential and Senate races, Republicans have a structural advantage in the House that could last through the next four elections.

Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s political architect, stopped short of predicting that the speaker’s gavel will remain in GOP hands through 2020. But he said the dual factors of sharp Republican line drawing and population shifts provided a solid foundation for the party.

“The impact,” he said, “is certainly favorable to Republicans at the congressional level.”

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Of the 435 districts that constitute the chamber, 242 tilt toward Republicans while 185 favor Democrats (another eight are evenly divided). In November, Mitt Romney - despite getting shellacked nationally – won 21 more congressional districts than President Barack Obama.

It’s for that reason that Democrats, who are 17 seats shy of the majority, start out the midterm season at risk of losing ground. While there are 15 Democrats residing in GOP-tilting districts, only four Republicans are in Democratic-friendly ones. And the Cook Political Report lists 37 Democratic-held seats as being competitive, compared to just 28 Republican ones.

Redistricting is the single biggest factor driving the GOP’s congressional power. When the process came to an end last year, 109 Republican seats were made safer as opposed to 67 Democratic seats. And 109 Democrat seats became more competitive, compared to just 96 Republicans.

Demographics also play a role. While Democrats are benefiting from a booming Latino population – a dynamic that’s helping them in presidential and statewide races — the party’s supporters have clustered in densely-packed, ethnically diverse urban population centers. The result is that wide swaths of suburban, exurban, and rural districts have been left to Republicans.

If Democrats are discouraged, they’re putting on a brave public face. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee frequently out-performs its GOP counterpart in monthly fundraising, and the party’s leaders maintain a sunny outlook about their prospects. In the final days leading up to the 2012 election, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told aides she was convinced her party could win control.

But for all the blood, sweat, and tears the party pours into the battle for the House, there is also a sense that larger forces are at work.

“I can’t worry about what’s out of our control. I can worry about what’s in our control,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.). “If we play strong offense and strong defense [in 2014], there is a path – not an exceedingly wide path – but there is a path.”

Israel argued that there are 52 Republican seats in play and 20 Democrats ones – in other words, a sufficiently wide enough field for his party to win the House.

For all the problems confronting Democrats, predicting flat-out that the party can’t return to power in the years is risky business. No matter how locked in the House may seem, there are always unforeseen events, scandals, and policy issues that have the potential to reshape the political environment.

In the last two decades, there have been three wave elections in the House – some of them helped along them by relatively sudden political disruptions.

“There are all these things out there that make it impossible to predict that one party can’t win an election between now and 2022,” said Mark Gersh, a top national Democratic strategist who has advised numerous Democratic groups, including the DCCC. “Events can overtake what’s going on.”

In 2006, for example, with anger rising over President Bush’s handling of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Democrats picked up 31 seats, enough to overcome the GOP’s 15-seat majority.

Still, the electoral map is much changed since then — and not in a way that’s cause for Democratic encouragement. According to David Wasserman, who analyzes House races for the Cook Political Report, Republicans went into the 2006 election with nearly five times more the number of seats on Democratic-friendly turf than they have in 2014.

Also that year, Democrats had the advantage of running against an increasingly unpopular Republican president. In 2014, Democrats have to contend with an occupant in the White House whose unpopularity among the right could help drive Republicans to the polls. It’s a dynamic that makes recruiting strong candidates in Republican-friendly areas and breaking the national map wide open – something then-DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel succeeded in doing in 2006 — that much more difficult.

“Rahm did an excellent job at recruitment,” Rove said. “If you’re a moderate-to-conservative Democrat, you’re not enthused about running on the Obama-Pelosi agenda.”

Republicans agree that the unknown makes it impossible to predict that they’ll hold the House for the decade, but they also argue that redistricting gave them a buffer.

“Politics is so dynamic right now that I wouldn’t ever project that far ahead because we’ve seen waves come and go, parties be pronounced dead and then revived,” said National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) “But I think the underpinnings for the House are pretty strong given the districts that have been drawn and locked in.”

Some Democrats envision a scenario in which demographic changes in states like North Carolina, Florida, and Texas would allow them to pick up seats and chip away at the GOP majority. Those changes might not come soon enough for the 2014 election, they say, but could swing races approaching the end of the decade.

Then there’s the argument heard most frequently from Democrats: That redistricting, while beneficial to the GOP in the short term, will only push Republicans farther to the right – prospectively damaging the party’s already shaky brand.

Israel said he couldn’t wait to label Republicans as out of the mainstream.

“Republicans are putting Republicans seats in play. They’re moving so far to the right they’re alienating swing voters,” he said. “We’re going to put bipartisanship on the ballot in 2014. We’re going to make this a referendum on competence.”