4t HOUSE IN CHAOS: Speaker Johnson declares the Democratic Party is crumbling from within—and insists even their own ranks are quietly whispering the same.

The gavel hasn’t even cooled from the latest spending showdown, yet House Speaker Mike Johnson is already sounding the death knell for the Democratic Party. “They’re not just losing elections,” he told a packed room of GOP donors in Dallas last Friday. “They’re losing themselves. And the whispers you hear in the cloakroom? Even Democrats know it.” What began as red-meat rhetoric has snowballed into a narrative with legs: a party fractured by ideology, exhausted by infighting, and hemorrhaging the moderate voters who once kept it afloat. If Johnson’s right, the 2026 midterms won’t be a wave—they’ll be a wipeout.

The evidence, he says, is hiding in plain sight. Start with the numbers: Democrats have lost 14 House seats since 2021, flipping once-safe districts in suburban Virginia, Long Island, and South Texas. Voter registration trends tell a bleaker story—Cook Political Report data shows a net loss of 1.2 million registered Democrats in swing states over the past two years, while independents surge. Johnson brandishes a leaked DCCC memo from September: “Urgent: Rebrand or perish.” The document, authenticated by three sources, warns that “progressive purity tests” are alienating working-class Hispanics and Black men under 40—two demographics that drifted right by double digits in 2024.

Then there’s the public meltdowns. Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s primary defeat in New York wasn’t just a loss; it was a referendum. The Squad’s fundraising hauls are down 38% cycle-over-cycle, per FEC filings. AOC’s much-hyped “Green New Deal 2.0” rally in Phoenix drew fewer than 400 attendees—half the crowd were protesters chanting “Defund the police? Defund you!” Even Hakeem Jeffries, the caucus’s steady hand, has stopped defending the party’s left flank. In a closed-door strategy session last week, captured on a hot mic and aired by Breitbart, Jeffries reportedly sighed: “We can’t keep pretending the activists speak for Scranton.”

Johnson’s most damning exhibit? The Democrats now echoing him. Sen. Joe Manchin, freshly independent, told CNN the party “left me before I left it.” Pennsylvania’s Conor Lamb, who narrowly held his seat in 2024, penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Stop Confusing Twitter with Pennsylvania.” And in a moment that lit conservative X feeds ablaze, Rep. Dean Phillips—fresh off his quixotic primary challenge to Biden—appeared on Fox News Sunday: “Mike’s not wrong. We’re eating our own seed corn.”

The policy fractures run deeper than personalities. The House Democratic agenda is paralyzed: a $15 minimum wage bill stalled when moderates demanded regional adjustments; climate provisions gutted after labor unions balked at electric-vehicle mandates; even criminal-justice reform died when suburban moms feared “defund” optics. Johnson keeps a whiteboard in his office tallying the corpses: 42 bills introduced, 3 passed. “That’s not governance,” he says. “That’s a support group with better catering.”

Behind the scenes, the money is drying up. EMILY’s List, once a $100 million juggernaut, raised just $34 million in the 2024 cycle—its worst haul since 2002. Donors cite “ideological whiplash” and “zero ROI on outrage.” One Silicon Valley bundler, speaking anonymously, told me: “I wrote checks to beat Trump. I didn’t sign up to fund TikTok revolutionaries who call me a colonizer.”

Johnson isn’t content to watch the implosion—he’s accelerating it. The House GOP’s “America First Revival” tour kicks off in Allentown next month, targeting the exact Rust Belt towns where Biden’s 2020 margins evaporated. Their pitch is simple: “Democrats forgot you. We didn’t.” Early focus groups show the message landing hardest with union households and Black entrepreneurs—two groups the DNC once took for granted.

Of course, Democrats aren’t waving a white flag. DNC Chair Jaime Harrison fired back on MSNBC: “Mike Johnson’s party can’t pass a budget, but sure, lecture us on unity.” Yet the rebuttals feel defensive, almost nostalgic. The energy—the viral moments, the cultural cachet—belongs to the right now. When Tim Walz tried a “weird” reprise at a Minnesota rally, the crowd barely mustered a chuckle.

History offers cold comfort. Parties have survived near-death experiences before—Republicans after Watergate, Democrats post-McGovern. But recovery requires ruthlessness: jettisoning dogma, recruiting pragmatists, and speaking in plain sentences. Johnson’s bet is that Democrats lack the stomach for the purge. As he told the Dallas crowd, grinning beneath the Lonestar chandelier: “They’re not falling apart. They’re already apart. We’re just sweeping up the pieces.”

Whether he’s prophesying or engineering the collapse, one thing is certain: the House under Johnson isn’t waiting for 2026. The chaos, he believes, is the opportunity—and the gavel is his megaphone.