Jack of Harts

It’s Election Day in America. Well…the polls are closed now, but we’re still counting the votes as we speak. And we probably will be counting the votes for another few weeks in some cases. Wisconsin Governor’s race, I’m looking at you. What do we know?

Well, projections are that the Democrats will take the House of Representatives by a slim margin after winning between 20 and 30 seats from the Republicans. That is in the middle range for what has historically happened in a President’s first midterm election. Of the twelve such elections since 1946, only George W Bush managed to gain seats. Six in his case. The rest range from Kennedy’s loss of 4 seats up through the 10s and 20s for the likes of Eisenhower, Nixon, and Bush Senior. Reagan lost 28, and it ramped up into the amazing 40s for Ford and Johnson. Truman lost on impressive 55, Clinton lost 53, and Obama lost a shocking 63 House seats. If Trump turns out to have lost around 30 seats, it will be a pretty hohum number compared to those who truly mastered the art of losing the House.

The news from the Senate is far more interesting and far outside the political norm. Kennedy managed to gain 4, Nixon got 2, Bush Junior added 1, and Reagan held the line at 0. Every other President lost between Bush Senior’s 1 and Truman’s impressive 10. I’ll note that Obama lost 6 and Clinton lost 9 for full disclosure. At the time of this writing, Trump looks like the final numbers could end up with him winning 3, 4, or maybe even 5 Senate seats depending on how all the recounting goes. That is a massive historical aberration. Yes, the landscape was stacked in Trump’s favor, but there are many close Senate races this year that should not have been close based on historical norms. Which will lead to some interesting political moves in the future.

The biggest lesson in all of this is, I think, that the voters did not appreciate what the Democrat Senators did to Kavanaugh and Ford during the Supreme Court nomination. It changed the political landscape by angering people on almost every side of the political divides, and Senate races that shouldn’t have been close got close really quick. The only Democrat to vote for Kavanaugh won his race in a screaming squeaker that he probably would have lost otherwise, and multiple Senators who voted against him in mixed or conservative States have either already lost or look like they could end up in Recount Hell as the days go by.

So what are we going to see next? Good question. With an increased majority in the Senate, and the replacement of Never Trumpers with Senators who owe Trump for campaigning in their States, Trump should find it much easier to get nominations for both his Executive and Judicial picks as the next two years go by. That could have a major impact on the future.

On the House side, the Democrats will almost certainly end the investigations that have uncovered Democrat collusion with Russia and the FBI during the last election. And they will almost certainly start other investigations of their own that they hope will uncover collusion between Trump and the Russians. Many Democrat leaders have promised to Impeach Trump and Kavanaugh, so that could get interesting as well. And of course we have the general Resistance the Democrats have been pushing for the last two years.

On the other hand, Clinton did say they could become civil after winning, and Pelosi just promised to bring in a new era of transparency and cooperation into the government, so who knows. Maybe the Democrats will be more interested in horse-trading with the President if they can get some of the credit for being leaders in the process. Also, I would note that many of the new Democrat Representatives are rather conservative Democrats who had to win in conservative districts. It will be interesting to see how exactly they impact the rather slim majority there. Also 20 or 30 of the Representatives promised not to support Pelosi for Speaker of the House. The Democrat majority could be in for some interesting horse-trading of their own long before they talk to the President, and those Never Pelosis could run into issues in two years if they turn around and follow her as Speaker.

What does this mean for the future? I don’t know. But after two years of Resistance from the minority position with no need or reason from their perspective to help the government run in any way, the Democrats now have skin in the game. They run the House of Representatives and they will need to be part of running the government again. Will they come to the table with verbal assaults against the President and his Deplorable supporters, or will they come as civilly as Clinton said they could when they win?

Only time will tell.

Imagine an America where the Federal government required that all election polls check a State-issued photo ID before allowing a citizen to vote. Assume a basic State-issued photo ID is free so we aren’t talking about a Poll Tax here. Only citizens with IDS could vote. We currently need photo IDs to buy alcohol, cigarettes, open bank accounts, get loans, drive vehicles, and basically do much of the other stuff covered under the category of living. We all carry them with us wherever we go. As someone I know once said, “Using it to show you’re the voter you claim to be is a nothing burger unless you’re not the voter you claim to be.” How would the Federal government work differently if we did that? And could the Federal government refuse to accept results from States that refused to verify the votes? How would that affect representation in the Federal government? Would you like to see voter ID verification or not? And what does either answer say about you and America?

Imagine an America where State legislatures pick the State Senators that serve in the Federal Senate. That is the America that was for the first century and a half of her history. The idea was that Senators beholden to legislatures and serving for six years would be insulated from the passions of the electorate that could sway the House. They would also act as representatives of the State governments and should therefore seek to limit the scope of the Federal government especially if it would negatively impact the sovereignty of the State legislatures that sent them. Imagine how different things would be if that was still the basis of how the Senate was chosen. How would you feel about that?