So the Blue Wave actually happened. Dems took back the House, but Republicans consolidated their majority in the Senate, and Trump certainly isn’t talking about bipartisanship.
So what happens next?
Will 2019 see a series of ideological cannons fired from one chamber of government to the other? Will the Senate “reform” healthcare knowing that it’s DOA in the House? Will the House pass a budget with huge cuts to the military knowing it’s DOA in the Senate?
We know Republicans were prepared to shut down the government in 2011, but it’s a different group now. And will Dems have the stomach for it? For example, will Dems give Trump trouble the next time raising the debt limit comes up?
Some commentators on CNN (yeah, I know) suggested that Trump is not an ideolog and there are a number of things that he and Pelosi agree on. They could fire up an Infrastructure bill. They could re-do their DACA agreement. Pelosi is smart, and she will leverage the subpoena power that the Dems now have.
Whatever issue trump may agree with Democrats on, it doesn’t matter. As soon as he compromises in any way, Fox News et al will rev up the outrage machine and no deals will be made.
The one area will Republican policy preferences will still get passed is with riders to defense appropriation bills. Massive overspending for the military is a bi-partisan issue.
The one bright spot is congressional over site on the various shit lords in trump’s cabinet. and of course continued investigation into 2016.
Does he explain how the Democrats are to achieve those policy objectives? Just going to find those Republicans willing to compromise and cross over party lines?
I agree that it might not go over well to go full WITCH HUNT, but I think the best thing the House can do is take up their role as a constitutional check on the President. That doesn’t mean shoot for impeachment, necessarily, but I’m fully on board with investigation and castigation.
With a Senate and House controlled by Democrats, there was a 100% certaintly Mueller would have come forward with his findings, and there would be an impeachment.
Now… it will still be tricky. It’s likely Mueller has dirt on senior Republicans in the Senate which will make prosecution more difficult, since they’ll stonewall out of their own self interest, even if enough information on Trump comes out to bury him.
They’re going to have to navigate impeachment hearings with a corrupt Republican leadership who are probably as guilty as Trump is, and so give those guys some way to save face and walk away.
Even if the Democrats had won the senate, you still wouldn’t have seen an impeachment. That was never even a remote possibility, because you need a super majority to convict. There weren’t enough GOP held senate seats even up for election this year to get that.
All that’s possible, and is still just as possible with simply having the Dems in control of the House, is that they can subpoena people and push forth a real investigation, regardless of anything Trump does. They can’t throw him out of office, but they can make information about his wrongdoing known to the public.
For the next 12-18 months, pretty much nothing happens. It’s all posturing and positioning for 2020.
House Democrats spend their time on investigations, which are trumpeted across non-FOX cable news and largely ignored everywhere else.
Trump spends his blaming Democrats for any and every tiny thing that he doesn’t like. FOX News and his base love it; everyone else does the usual hand-wringing “fact checks” that make no difference.
After that, of course, it’s the 2020 election cycle.
Democrats woefully ineffective messaging fails to prevent Republicans from painting them as an obstructionist, do-nothing party sitting in the way of real cooperation, despite that literally being what Republicans have spent most of the last few decades doing. Some portion* of gullible “independent” voters (is there a more loathsome thing than someone who lacks the conviction to pick a side by now? At least the Republicans are brave enough to own their blatant racism and sexism nowadays) are won over by this messaging tactic.
Armando is 100% correct. I expect there will be government shut downs, rampant propaganda on Fox News and the like, every bill dying in the Senate, and a lot of Presidential pardons.
I think it would be good to show the GOP that they don’t have a monopoly on investigating the president. And we have the advantage of there actually being crimes at the top rather than blowjobs.
Exactly, the divided control of Senate and House is an ideal stage from which to politically grandstand. Either party can pass whatever bill they want without having to worry about it actually passing as such. They can just shake their head and point to the opposite party as the bad guys stopping all progress. Expect both parties to indulge in this.
One specific example I expect to come up, Obamacare reform, is something that an R controlled House and Senate couldn’t touch. Because the actual consequences of screwing with Obamacare would outrage voters.
But now it’s back on the table in a big way. I bet the Senate passes something stupid in the happy knowledge that it gets them publicity, fires up the base, and will die quietly in the House. All the publicity, none of the consequences!
I expect the Democrats, who (mostly) want to do the right thing, will try to advance real legislation and get stymied at every step and just look weak. Republicans in the Senate will push shit like repealing Child labor laws and call it the Freedom To Work act, and then blame the Democrats for hating Jobs for Real Americans, and the country will eat it up because they’re stupid.
This is what I meant by vollies of ideological bills. The smart thing for Rs to do is pass tons of stuff their base loves and throw it over to the House to die. Same for Ds. National minimum wage increase? Done! Single-payer healthcare? Done! DACA? Done!
The big question will come down to the budget and debt ceiling raises. Those must get done.
Each side received whispers that the public is not in total agreement with them, but neither side is likely to listen, especially since the divided Congress certainly encourages stalemate and positioning for '20.
Dems face tough tactical decisions. Obviously, if Mueller reports something directly implicacting Trump, it is a no brainer to vote impeachment and let the Republican Senate show their disregard for the rule of law, or else remove their own president. But if Mueller’s report shows only that Trump surrounded himself with idiots who got taken in by the Russians (my honest guess) and that he then tried to muffle this, well, it will play out very differently. The Dem base will crucify their own House for not impeaching, but the Senate will feel no need to remove Trump, and we are likely to see the same public response we saw yesterday. In fact, Trump may well get away with wrapping himself in the flag and claiming that it wasn’t just loyal patriots he was protecting form investigation, it was in the national interest. Sadly, I think this has a pretty good chance of working.
The other tough decision will be how far to go in using House committee chairs’ unilateral power to investigate and subpoena. Obviously, the Republicans were wildly abusive in this regard. But the problem is that a lot of Democrats will feel their own party is dirty, if they imitate this tactic in a naked play to disrupt the administration. For better or worse, we rely on a lot more idealistic voters’ support to win, as compared to the Republicans. But if the Dems don’t put a serious hurt on the Republicans with this tactic, then Republicans will have no motivation to step back from this highly controversial rule.
In the meantime, I’d bet every penny I have that something very dark is going on with the core (“respectable”) Republicans’ tactics. They likely already got all they really could ask for from this president, enormous tax cuts for the richest. Now they want their party back. But they also want liberals to be forever blamed for Trump’s fall, whatever form that takes. That way, they can count on populists’ votes forever, without the inconvenience of having to do anything policy-wise for the populists. That’s basically been the core Republican strategy all of my adult life, and I will be surprised if they abandon it now.
So although pretty much nothing is likely to happen, policy-wise, the next couple years, the posturing and positioning is going to be ferocious.
Personally, I hope that the Dems proceed very cautiously on impeachment, but use the House committees to subpoena every breathing Republican, such that nothing can be done and no conservative who has ever jaywalked is safe. Then, 18 months from now, offer to change the rules back permanently.
Nice summary here of what the world thinks about the election results.
I thought the French article referenced was particularly telling:
I expect that’s what most of the world is thinking. “Trump didn’t lose as much ground in the midterms as Obama did despite all his crazy shit. We’re stuck with this insanity and it’ll probably last 6 more years.”
