If all you knew about the U.S. government came from this year’s campaigns, you’d think senators serve two-year terms. Democrats are condemning their Republican opponents for not standing up to Donald Trump, and Republicans are warning that Democrats will block the president’s agenda and harass and impeach him if they take Congress. Both parties are thus asking voters to think only about the first third of their future senators’ time in office.
That overestimates how consequential control of the Senate will be during that period. Neither party is going to enact a substantial legislative agenda. In the Republicans’ case, it’s because they don’t have one in the first place and likely won’t have a House majority, either. In the Democrats’ case, it’s because even with control of both chambers, they won’t be able to overcome Trump vetoes.
A Democratic majority in the Senate would launch multiple investigations of the president and his administration. But the Democrats don’t need the Senate for that if, as expected, they take the House. If the House impeaches Trump, a Democratic Senate would be more likely to hold a trial. But a conviction, which requires the support of 67 senators, is unlikely regardless of which party holds the gavels.
Given these realities, control of the Senate would have only a few significant effects. The majority party would have additional say over spending bills and Trump’s nominees. Even that influence would be limited. Both parties would need to sign off on appropriations for them to become law. Trump could also use the Vacancies Act to put loyalists in executive-branch positions if the Senate rejects or stonewalls his nominees. That leaves the question of judicial nominees. Control of the Senate would make a real difference for their confirmations, especially if a Supreme Court justice dies or resigns.
Yet when it comes to what most infuriates liberal voters about Trump — from his corruption to his immigration policies to his tariffs — the Senate elections aren’t especially relevant. To the extent Democrats would be able to push back on any of those issues, having both chambers wouldn’t give them much more leverage than control of the House alone would.
Voters’ choices now, however, could greatly affect the first presidential term after Trump leaves office.
Consider, first, the possibility that a Republican wins the 2028 election. In the last 70 years, a party has never taken control of the House and then lost it again two years later. If the Democrats win the chamber next month, they are likely to have it in 2029. And in 2031, too. House control has never flipped in a president’s favor during a midterm. Even if a new Republican president wanted to use Congress to change government policies (a low priority for the party in the last nine years), he may not be able to.
If the Democrats win in 2028 — especially after a strong showing this year — it will be an altogether different scenario. They will have the opportunity to enact a transformational agenda. If they have both chambers of Congress and the White House, moreover, they will be tempted to cast off all restraints and entrench their preferences.
Democratic support for packing the Supreme Court with progressive justices, a policy that has been regarded as constitutional vandalism for nearly a century, has been rising. This would require ending the Senate filibuster, which would allow more party-line legislation than any modern Republican has enacted. Democrats would likely try to admit new states to tilt the national balance of power their way. They would push again to forbid states from requiring photo identification for voting in federal elections. They would also forbid states from implementing any meaningful restrictions on abortion, even late in pregnancy. And they would almost certainly make statutory and administrative changes to return the country, at least partway, to the lax border policies of Joe Biden’s presidency.
All this would stoke partisan anger and reduce public confidence in America’s political institutions while making it harder to do anything about these ill effects.
Recent elections have shown the country to have two overlapping majorities: one that ranges from skeptical to hostile toward Trump, and one that ranges from skeptical to hostile toward the left. Some people who belong to both majorities may be tempted to support Democratic Senate candidates this year to teach Republicans a lesson about their fealty to Trump, neglect of their constitutional duties and abandonment of traditional standards of character in candidates for public office.
The sad truth, though, is that parties rarely take this sort of lesson to heart. Democrats got pasted in the 2014 Senate elections and kept moving to the left afterward. The 2022 elections, in which a slew of Senate candidates failed after campaigning on the idea that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen, showed Republicans the risk of going all-in on Trump’s fantasies. They decided to take the risk anyway and paid no price two years later.
Republicans would react to losing the Senate by blaming high gas prices and the typical midterm swing against the party in power rather than to do any deep soul-searching. Democrats, meanwhile, would likely take their victory as a reason to keep indulging their least responsible faction.
The former certainly deserve to lose big this year. I hope they hold the Senate anyway.
The post The fight for the Senate? It isn’t all about Trump. appeared first on Washington Post.
