Republicans routed as Democrats gain powerful new leverage over Trump for remainder of his presidency
Democrats have regained control of the US Senate, routing Republicans nationwide with historic victories that will give them powerful new leverage over Donald Trump for the remainder of his presidency.
Democrats will soon have the ability to hold up not just Trump’s legislative agenda, but also any appointments he makes to his cabinet or the federal judiciary – including the supreme court, where conservatives have a 6-3 majority.
It would be nice, but that’s probably not in the cards for the next two years. Even if everything goes right at this point, the Democrats would be looking at 55 seats in the Senate. That’s still 5 seats short of overriding filibusters or vetoes and also for an impeachment conviction. The Democrats need to govern well, get the cost of living down and they need to show that the trust put in them was well placed. Spending the next two years in a bunch of political theater won’t do that and Democrats will lose the trust they have now.
Trump’s corrupt regime needs to be held to account, but that’s not going to happen in the next two years. Democrats need to prove they can make peoples’ lives better so they can expand (or at least maintain) their advantage. Then, if they can win the Presidency in 2028, then it will be time to retool the DOJ into an actual law enforcement arm and turn them loose on the corruption of Trump’s administration.
They don’t have trust now. They are not Republicans; that is the one and only reason they are winning today. None of this is about trusting Democrats and if they don’t understand that and respond appropriately then the US is going to have Marco Rubio or some other Republican ass clown as president in 2028.
Talriko and el sayed seem like noncareer politicians. Maybe they’ll actually bring about some change like zohran and you’ll see more candidates like them in future.
Was surprised to see independents in iowa, montana and nebraska give tough fights.
I really don’t see any way the GOP wins the presidency in 2028. That’s just not how US politics work. People always hate Congress, but they blame the president for bad economies and bad news.
It’s far more likely this turns out like 2006-2008, where the Dems had a huge wave in 2006 and then an even bigger one in 2008 when they elected Obama.
Swing and low info voters simply don’t give much of a shit about the work Congress actually does on a daily basis. They’re going to blame the president for their problems like they always have.
Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace in 1974. Regan trounced Carter in 1980. Never underestimate the American public’s willingness to forget about past crimes. I hope you’re right that 2028 becomes a second drubbing of the GOP over their failed policies and corruption. I also doubt that what we saw last night will have any durability. It wasn’t all that long ago that Democrats were talking about the the Blue Wall. And that fell apart almost as fast as it got named.
I agree that most voters don’t care about politics. And more importantly, they don’t want to hear about it. And this is why I see an impeachment (which will ultimately fail) is such a dumb play. It will force people to deal with politics. It will be the news cycle for months. And ultimately the votes just don’t exist in the Senate to convict. Which means the public has politics shoved in their face for months and the end result is a propaganda win for Trump. He will push a failure to convict as him being “INNOCENT of any wrong doing” (of course it will use ALL CAPS). And the Democrats get what out of that? No one is held accountable, nothing useful gets done to begin the process of fixing the country, and the public just sees the Democrats being useless for months on end.
We need to hold Trump and his cronies accountable. But it’s not really possible right now. Once he is out of office and we have a DOJ which isn’t filled with criminals, then they can pick apart the criminal empire. Until then, the Democrats need to show the public that they are working to make the lives of the public better.
Nixon resigned due to corruption, and then who became president in 76? The economy stunk it up and Iran humiliated us in 1980, so then who became president? War goes bad and economy tanks in 2006, who got elected in 2008? Congress obstructs Obama for two years, who became president in 2016?
I think you’re proving my point, rather than refuting it. I’m not saying Americans have a long memory, I’m saying they’ve proven they don’t understand the role of Congress in our government and blame the head of state instead.
You can go back many decades and see the same pattern over and over again. Americans blame the president when things aren’t going well, and reelect the president when they think things are good. And it’s mainly but not exclusively tied to the economy.
I don’t see the economy improving with Trump in charge. It’ll likely get worse. The GOP can whine and cry about Congress all they want but that’s never worked in the past, and won’t work now. Americans expect the president to deliver and they’ve allowed Congress to concede large amounts of power to the WH for that reason over the decades.
I’m not making any argument about impeachment here (I’d rather harass the GOP with constant investigations), I’m simply saying the GOP doesn’t have a good way out of this situation. And I do think it’s going to be durable, because Trump is their biggest liability and he absolutely cannot stfu or stop doing impulsive, stupid stuff that grabs headlines and legitimately hurts voters.
If Trump kicks the bucket and Vance tones things down, that could change the landscape. But even then he’s not going to do all that much with a Dem Congress and many things like the medicaid cuts will hit hard under his watch.
I feel quite sure they don’t and won’t. I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
All of this, AND the problem remains of the establishment Democrats who are not fascists, but maybe where Republicans were like 20ish years ago. So it’s very much an uphill battle for real progress.
But this is a night to celebrate.
The easy part of a democracy is saying, “I have the right to vote”. The hard part of democracy is say, “ya, that asshole also has the right to vote.” Whether we like it or not, the country as a whole is no where near as liberal/progressive/left wing as Lemmy. This is going to mean that we have to work with folks with whom we have pretty significant disagreement. Hopefully with these wins, things can shift leftward and more can get done. At minimum, we can slam the brakes on the GOP and Trump’s corruption and undermining of our democracy. It’s slow, its frustrating and it often means we don’t get what we really want. But, as terrible of a form of government as democracy is, it’s a damn sight better than anything else we’ve tried in history.
WRONG. Blocked.
I kid, I kid.
On serious note, agreed. And we have to keep working outside of the main elections. The primaries are where we get to vote for progressives. No progressives? Getting them to run in the primaries is how we get them :)
It’s massive work, but yesterday was a good day.
Problem: The American public is out for blood. Making an example out of Trump and his allies is an essential part of gaining any long-term trust from voters. According to exit polls the state of democracy was the top issue for Democrat voters, and to deliver on that requires accountability.
Solution: Democrats need to Louis XVI this motherfucker.
I agree that it’s needed. But it’s a dead issue for the next two years. Let’s assume both Alaska and Mississippi break for Democrats. That’s 56 seats in the Senate. If we assume that all 56 Democratic Senators vote for impeachment, that’s still 4 votes short of a conviction. Where do those last 4 votes come from?
Maybe they can convince Rand Paul to vote for impeachment. While he may be a couple cards short of a pair, he’s pretty consistent in his Libertarian views. He might be willing to go against Trump.
Then there is Ted Cruz. Sure, he’s been a full on cock-Gobbels-ing Trump. But, he did originally fight Trump and might be quite willing to jettison Trump and try to build a “savior of the GOP” for a 2028 Presidential run.
And then who? Oddly, I think Lindsey Graham might have been a possibility, but he’s done the world a favor and dropped dead. And this is before we consider John Fetterman seeking to ingratiate himself further to Trump,. meaning Democrats would need to pick up another vote for impeachment.
I just don’t see it as within reach. At best, it becomes virtue signaling. At worst, Trump touts the lack of conviction as “Proof” that he is innocent and of Democrats’ “Trump Derangement Syndrome”. It hands Trump a propaganda win while accomplishing nothing real in return. It gives him an issue to take back to the GOP base and repair some of the damage to his cult of personality. And nothing actually gets done.
Ya, it sucks big old donkey balls, but the real accountability is going to have to happen after he is out of the Presidency. His own DOJ has kinda shown the way on this. Break out the RICO act and go after every single one of the criminals who supported his corrupt regime. Toss everyone we can in jail and throw away the key.
The thing is that with a majority in the Senate they can conduct an actual investigation rather than immediately vote to acquit. This will put Trump’s corruption on full blast, partly due to the better platform, partly because the Trump admin would have to comply with the investigation, forcing the remaining Republicans into a politically disadvantageous position when they inevitably vote to acquit. That aside,
Which is something the Democrats absolutely need to be doing. Remember that before this whole mess the public had almost no faith in the Democratic Party; they have to show that they’re in it for real this time and one way to do that is to carry impeachment proceedings to their conclusion.
The Republicans folded like lawn chairs once they knew they couldn’t block the release of the Epstein Files. They just need to be pressured enough to throw the executive under the bus to save their own asses.