Davis' campaign has been criticized as poorly-run, and some have wondered if she was the right nominee for the party. But these criticisms miss the point — both the long-term structure of Texas politics and the state's short-term situation mean that 2014 never looked like a promising year for a Democratic comeback. "The assessment of Wendy Davis has been a little unfair, and too focused on her rather than on the context of the candidacy," says Professor James Henson of the University of Texas at Austin.

After years of clashes and a grudging truce, fiscal and economic policy was brought back to center stage by the wave of Republican electoral victories on Tuesday, with both President Obama and the new congressional leadership expressing hope that deals can be reached to simplify the tax code, promote trade and eliminate the budget deficit.

But there are deep policy differences between Republican leaders and the White House. Chris Krueger, a Washington policy analyst for Guggenheim Securities, told clients Thursday morning that he actually saw the chance of tax reform eroding, not improving, because professions of comity would soon be swamped by budget brinkmanship.

The Treasury Department under Mr. Obama has already proposed a detailed plan to broadly overhaul the corporate tax code and bring down the corporate income tax rate to 28 percent from 35 percent. Mr. Obama proposed a novel deal to Republicans: simplify the corporate tax code and allow multinational corporations a one-time low tax rate to bring home billions of dollars in profits parked overseas, but use the windfall from that “tax holiday” for infrastructure spending. Neither proposal went anywhere.

Republican aides involved in tax reform say the desire to find a deal is real, but the distance between the Republican Congress and the White House is wider than the president or Republican leaders are indicating. Much of the spade work is done. The Treasury’s business tax plan details just how many loopholes would have to be eliminated or curtailed to bring the rate down to 28 percent, a level not low enough for Republicans.

The retiring Ways and Means chairman, Dave Camp of Michigan, produced an even broader tax code overhaul that would include individuals and small businesses. It included provisions that should have broad appeal among Democrats: a tax on large banks, a surtax on high-income individuals, and a narrower limit on deductions for large mortgages and retirement savings. It also includes a variant of Mr. Obama’s infrastructure spending plan.

But huge impediments could block the path, one House Republican aide said. The White House still would like a tax overhaul to increase revenue to help address the national debt. Republicans want a simplified tax code to produce the same amount of revenue as the current one. And Mr. Ryan believes the faster economic growth that he says such reform would bring should be assumed when the tax take is estimated. That would mean that if faster growth does not materialize, a Ryan tax plan would fall short of its revenue projections.

Bigger still is the scale of ambition. Thus far, Mr. Obama wants to confine the tax overhaul to the byzantine corporate tax code, which would leave the tax forms of individuals and most small businesses untouched.

To Republicans, that is impossible, philosophically and politically. Business lobbies like the National Federation of Independent Business and even the Chamber of Commerce would stand in the way. Republicans would worry that they would be castigated as helping Big Business while ignoring the travails of other taxpayers.

But White House officials say they attained the progressive tax code they wanted when the “fiscal cliff” deal of January 2013 allowed the highest tax rate on affluent families to return to 39.6 percent, after the expiration of a cut passed under President George W. Bush. They worry that any simplification of the individual tax code would reduce tax rates on the rich at the expense of lower-income families.

The window for action is short, given the complexity of the task, Mr. Obama’s lame-duck stature and the looming presidential election. A senior Republican House aide involved in tax policy said that unless both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee have drafted and approved legislation, a potential deal would probably slide to the next president.