The race for the White House is settled: Donald Trump has won a second term. The race for control of the US Senate is also settled: although we don’t yet know exactly what the Republican majority will be, the party has already secured enough seats to retake the chamber.

And then there’s the U.S. House of Representatives – where the picture isn’t yet clear.

As I type, according to Latest count from NBC NewsRepublicans won 211 seats, while Democrats won 200. A majority is 218 seats, meaning Democrats will need to win in at least 18 of the remaining 24 elections.

Is this possible? Yes. Is this likely? Not really. Anyway, as NBC News says Sahil Kapur summarythe race for control of the chamber is “heading towards a photo finish”.

But let’s say, for the sake of conversation, that the Democrats are a little short of their goal and the current Republican majority is hanging on. PunchBowl’ News landscape summary underlined an important point:

Absolutely true. We know what happens when this Republican Party conference tries to govern by a razor-thin margin in the House because This is precisely what we have seen over the last two years.

And by any fair measure, the last two years have been a humiliating failure for House Republicans, not only because of their misguided priorities and right-wing extremists, but also because the Republican Party’s advantage in the House is so weak that the party has struggled to accomplish even the most basic legislative tasks. The Republicans didn’t even manage to pass some of their own invoicesthat House Democrats were powerless to stop.

Earlier this year, a Punchbowl News report concluded: “This is the most chaotic, ineffective and ineffective majority we have seen in decades in Congress. » In the months that followed, conditions deteriorated further.

Certainly, Republicans would welcome this problem, because the alternative is being in the minority. What’s more, the broader dynamic could be A little different in the next Congress because of Trump barking on orders from the White House, rather than Mar-a-Lago.

But the bottom line remains the same: The House GOP has spent two years mired in a chaotic mess of its own making. The next two years could very well offer more of the same.