Kevin McCarthy is the overwhelming favorite to become the next speaker of the House. So what are Democrats expecting? They say all the right things about looking forward to working with him and finding him to be "very approachable" and so on,
but the bottom line is that as long as he's working with the current House Republican conference and following the Hastert Rule, the sane, responsible governance will be hard to come by.
Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, one of the few prominent Democrats who can point to a relatively tight relationship with McCarthy, said he’s not optimistic that the California Republican can change or improve the gridlock that has gripped the chamber. “We have worked together but I think he’s [going to be] in the same position that Mr. Boehner has been in,” Hoyer said.
The only real way McCarthy can be in a different position than Boehner is to embrace his members' extremism and refuse to pass must-pass bills that have any chance of getting through the Senate or getting the president's signature. Because if he tries to work with Democrats, he will face the same revolt Boehner did. Also:
Top Democrats say they haven’t been impressed by his tenure in leadership – McCarthy was majority whip before becoming the No. 2 – as the GOP has repeatedly pulled difficult legislation off the floor, not to mention the 2013 government shutdown.
All those bills that got pulled at the last minute raise questions either about McCarthy's ability to count votes or his ability to keep members in line to vote how they told him they would. But again, that's the House Republicans. They will always be in disarray, because the far-far-far right position their leadership is taking will never be good enough for some significant fraction of members, who can be relied on to threaten revolt if they don't get their way.