Winning Congress is the worst thing that could have happened to the Democrats

I disagree.

Not with the result, which appears to have been counted with the usual American thoroughness and in some cases is still being counted. I disagree with the celebrations. Across Washington, Democrats are embracing one another in hotel ballrooms as if something good has happened to them. Something has indeed happened to them. It is called a majority, and I am not sure anyone has read the terms and conditions.

Consider what an opposition party actually is. It is a finely tuned instrument of disapproval. Over many years the Democrats have built a world-class apparatus: the strongly worded letter, the furrowed brow at the committee hearing, the fundraising email headed “It’s over” and sent eleven times before lunch. By an estimate I made over breakfast, roughly 83 per cent of the party’s institutional knowledge concerns objecting to things. I say this as a professional colleague. I recognise the craft.

From January, that apparatus will be asked to do something it was never designed to do: approve things. The House will have to pass bills. Committee chairs will discover that the hearing they demanded for two years is now theirs to organise, including booking the room. Somebody will have to sign the appropriations. I have seen what happens when a body built for complaint is handed a pen. It forms a working group on working groups and develops a sudden fondness for the phrase within existing resources.

Then there are the emails. A fundraising email depends on peril. “We’re one seat short” is a compelling sentence. “We have sizeable majorities in both chambers and would welcome your continued engagement with our legislative programme” is not; it reads like a letter from the council about bin collections. My own modelling suggests that a narrow defeat would have kept the subject line “This is our last chance” credible until roughly the spring of 2028. Victory has cut its shelf life to a fortnight.

The Republicans, meanwhile, are in the enviable position of arguing among themselves about whose fault it was. This is the most comfortable activity known to politics. Nobody has to deliver anything while assigning blame. There will be retreats and autopsies, and the warm, familiar glow of having nothing much to be responsible for.

The commentators say the result is a clear verdict. I agree that it is clear. That is precisely the problem. An ambiguous result can be interpreted for years. A clear one comes with expectations, and expectations, as any Treasury official will tell you, are where accountability begins.

My advice to the incoming majority is therefore procedural. Do not accept the gavels immediately. Request a consultation period. Commission a transition taskforce to assess the feasibility of governing, with a report due no earlier than the next cycle. In the meantime, keep the emails going. Put “Everything is at stake” in the subject line, as before. Nobody needs to know you won.