My expectations last night were 20-25 House seats and plus one or two in the Senate. As we can all see this morning it’s looking like maybe 10 House seats and a chance of gaining one in the Senate. It’s also possible the GOP could lose GA and NV and wind up with one less seat than they had previously. For the sake of argument, let’s assume a narrow majority in the House and the Senate remains 50-50 with VP Harris breaking ties. If that’s where things land is there any silver lining?

In the short term it’s definitely a mixed bag. Without the House, Democrats can’t pass anymore giant spending packages which is good news. But Biden would (again, for sake of argument) still have the Senate which means he can appoint progressive judges for the next two years.

However, if you look forward at what the country is facing there may be some advantage for the GOP to not be holding the bag next year. A lot of Americans already feel like we’re in a recession. Whether we’re already in one technically has been hotly debated but a lot of economists believe that even if we aren’t now, we will be sometime next year. CNBC published another story on this topic yesterday.

A U.S. recession is “quite likely” next year as persistent inflationary pressures force the Federal Reserve to shift interest rates higher than expected, former Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren said Tuesday.

Rosengren told CNBC that the U.S. central bank now looked likely to increase its terminal policy rate — the level at which it will stop raising interest rates — to more than the 5% forecast by investors, pushing the economy into a mild downturn in 2023.

“I think it’s quite likely the U.S. has a mild recession next year,” Rosengren told CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche at a UBS conference in London.

If this happens, I think we all know that Biden will do his best to blame the problem on Putin and the GOP. The GOP will likewise continue to blame Biden and the Democrats. My own take, which I’ve mentioned several times before, is that neither party is really in a position to fix inflation at this point. That’s really up to the Fed which operates independently. They are going to raise rates until inflation is under control whether Biden likes it or not. He can complain or remain silent but either way there’s not a lot he can do.

But, politically, there are a lot of voters out there who will blame the party in power if a) inflation remains high or b) we wind up in a recession. It comes down to that simple question: Are you better off now than you were x years ago? And given the outlook right now, the answer for a lot of people is going to be a firm no.

That sets us up for a change election in 2024, i.e. let’s throw the bums out. Assuming that’s the general dynamic next year as the race gets underway, it might be to the GOP’s advantage not to be in the line of fire of angry voters. It sets up an argument about competence that I don’t think will help Joe Biden’s approval ratings much. On the other hand it might help a certain GOP governor who won overwhelmingly last night in part because of his competence dealing with a recent natural disaster.

In any case, it’ll be a tougher sell to blame the GOP for the bad economy if they only have control of half of congress. Okay, I confess it’s not much of a silver lining but it’s the best I could come up with after a bad night. The good news is that the 2024 Senate map is more favorable to the GOP than this year’s map. So Democrats’ chances of holding the Senate in 2024 aren’t good no matter what the dynamic.

Even as the caucus pushes to expand a 50-50 majority this fall, it’s bracing for a fight to defend 23 seats to the GOP’s 10 in the next election cycle — many of them in red and purple territory. Against that backdrop, at least eight members of Chuck Schumer’s caucus are agonizing over whether to run again, and a couple hail from states that may be lost to the GOP if the incumbent bows out…

Some of those wrestling with whether to run hold safe seats, like Ben Cardin of Maryland and Tom Carper of Delaware. Others represent perennial battlegrounds, like Jon Tester of Montana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, both of whom survived the 2018 midterm cycle that evicted four colleagues from red or swing states…

Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, which Trump won by 8 points, said he still plans to run for reelection in his red-tilting state, a big shot in the arm for Schumer and whoever chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Still, Democrats’ best 2024 pick-up opportunities are probably Texas and Florida — not exactly fertile ground.

There’s still a chance the GOP could pull out a win in the Senate and I hope it happens, but even if they can’t quite do it, Democrats may not enjoy being in power next year. No matter what else happens, Dems face a tougher map two years from now making their chances of either winning back or holding the Senate pretty low.