TPM Reader DD says I’m not seeing the forest for the trees about Democratic prospects in the House. From DD …

Reader reaction with some thoughtful nuance about Dem chances on holding the House

The recent upswing for Democrats across several metrics has folks, including yourself, feeling hopeful that Democrats could somehow maintain control of the House. Now I know you’ve said it’s still a long shot and unlikely but I think that long shot misses the forest for the trees (or actually the trees for the forest).

At the macro level there are plenty of reasons to maintain that hope, and the rising, and real, fortunes of Senate Democrats seem to color that perspective. But with the House it’s a matter of math and race-by-race dynamics. By those measures the House is all but gone for Democrats, although the losses may be low enough that they’re in the hunt to reclaim the majority in 2024.

Another point which comes out of last night’s result. It now seems quite possible, perhaps even probable, that the outcome of the midterms will come down to high stakes GOP redistricting wins that came right at the end of the cycle in NY, FL and OH. I don’t say that to bum anyone out or to predict that Democrats can’t win the House. It is only to note how close it seems likely to be and that those extra seats could well be in the margin.

I’ve just seen it noted that it now appears that in all five post-Dobbs special elections to the House Democrats have improved on Biden’s 2020 performance by at least 2 percentage points. The story from 2020 was that Biden did well enough to beat Trump by a decent margin. But Democratic congressional candidates didn’t do as well as he did. So they’re improving on 2020, which suggests a very different midterm environment than we’ve been hearing about for months.

A bit more on last night’s result in NY-19, which I discussed here. The only minor update is that it didn’t even turn out to be a virtual tie. Democrat Pat Ryan appears to have won with 52% of the vote — a clear if close win. Ryan will only serve for four months. He’s on the November ballot in the new adjoining 18th district. Republican Molinaro will also be on the ballot in a redrawn 19th district against Democrat Josh Riley. The takeaway is the same as last night. Molinaro was and is a first-rate recruit in what the Cook Report calls a dead-even district. The fact that Republicans couldn’t notch a solid win here strongly suggests the governing assumptions about the 2022 midterm are simply wrong.