New Orleans     With one death and one resignation, the Republican majority in the US House of Representatives has dropped to 218.  There are 435 seats in the House, giving them a one-vote margin right now.  Georgia is scheduling a special election to recover one seat, but another shutdown vote comes within weeks, so if a Republican Congressperson gets the flu, misses a plane, or worse, it’s curtains.  Trump seems to know this viscerally.  He may be going senile, but he seems to have tried to fire up the Republican caucus to go hard in the midterms, not for their own sake, but to prevent him having to live through a third impeachment trial.

That’s interesting.

The odds on Democrats taking control of the House in the midterms are very, very high, but in the US Senate not nearly as good.  Three seats would have to switch and the map is less favorable.  All of which means that the House could vote to impeach for a third time, and the Senate once again could deny the petition.

Surely, the Democrats could think of some better ways to spend their time to actually build power and deliver progress to the American people, rather than being performative and playing a zero-sum game with Trump that they can’t win.

Surely, Trump, even as a narcissist, can think of some real incentive for Congress members to win re-election this year other than to save his ass.  One suggestion might be even allowing them to play their historic role in what we must now quaintly refer to as our “balance of powers” and let them actually have a job in governance, rather than just acting as a rubber stamp or “amen chorus.”

Democrats need to make their own agenda and let the pendulum swing back towards justice.  Without the Senate, they will still be hamstrung, but controlling the House allows them to both stop some of the madness and act independently, particularly on the budget, as well as a laundry list of other areas.

Trump has proven that power can be assembled and used aggressively.  There is a lesson there for everyone.  What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.  For the Democrats to be worth anything to the rest of us, they need to move from reaction mode to full-blow action position.  They need to make the plan now, get their caucus consensus, and understand that the stakes are about saving the country.