That’s be­cause House Demo­crats are in much bet­ter po­s­i­tion to re­cap­ture the ma­jor­ity in two years than their Sen­ate coun­ter­parts. If Trump struggles in of­fice and Demo­crats be­ne­fit as the op­pos­i­tion party, their odds of win­ning a Sen­ate ma­jor­ity would still be nearly im­possible. A mere eight Sen­ate Re­pub­lic­ans are fa­cing reelec­tion in 2018, and six of them are run­ning in the most con­ser­vat­ive states in the coun­try. Sen­ate Demo­crats need to pick up three seats to re­take the ma­jor­ity, which would re­quire de­fend­ing all 11 of their vul­ner­able mem­bers while de­feat­ing someone like Ted Cruz in Texas or Bob Cork­er in Ten­ness­ee. Don’t bet on it.

But if an anti-Trump wave hits the coun­try, House Demo­crats would be well-po­si­tioned to take ad­vant­age—if they re­cruit ef­fect­ively and of­fer a more mod­er­ate im­age than they’ve presen­ted in re­cent years. They need to pick up 24 seats to re­gain the ma­jor­ity, around the same num­ber of Re­pub­lic­ans who are rep­res­ent­ing con­gres­sion­al seats that Clin­ton car­ried. (Cook Polit­ic­al Re­port House ana­lyst Dav­id Wasser­man said the fi­nal tally of split-tick­et Re­pub­lic­an dis­tricts will be between 20 and 23.) To win back the House, Demo­crats would merely need to flip the pleth­ora of com­pet­it­ive sub­urb­an seats where House Re­pub­lic­ans ran well ahead of Trump to win reelec­tion. With Trump in of­fice and rebrand­ing the Re­pub­lic­an Party, these mem­bers will find it more dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish them­selves from the ad­min­is­tra­tion…

Demo­crats are act­ing as if the House isn’t even win­nable in two years. Pelosi brought back the same chair­man, Rep. Ben Ray Lu­jan, who led House Demo­crats to one of the most dis­ap­point­ing elec­tions in memory. They failed to re­cruit cred­ible can­did­ates in sub­urb­an dis­tricts that Clin­ton car­ried, and re­lied on a failed strategy that con­nec­ted House Re­pub­lic­ans to Trump in­stead of ar­tic­u­lat­ing a pos­it­ive agenda.