With everything going their way in the final weeks before an election in which Democrats will almost certainly win control of the House and possibly the Senate, many are beginning to raise the question: What then?
“Democrats should not misinterpret the results of midterm and say, ‘Well, great, we won some seats. That means everyone loves the Democrats again,’” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) said last month at the Cap Times Idea Fest in Madison, Wisconsin.
“The Democrats owe a positive, affirmative agenda to the public, and a midterm tends to be kind of a protest vote against the leader in power,” she added. “Things change very quickly now, and the country is just looking for new and different and bold.”
In past midterm elections, the party out of power has felt the need to brand itself with a concrete set of policy proposals. In 1994, when Republicans regained control of the House for the first time in four decades, they touted a 10-point plan they dubbed their “Contract with America.” It included poll-tested measures such as bills requiring members of Congress to live under laws it applied to the rest of America, adding a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution and imposing congressional term limits.
When Democrats took that majority back in 2006, their rallying cry was “Six for 06.″ Their package included raising the minimum wage and allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices.
Though these promises helped shape a governing blueprint for the new House majorities, many died in the Senate.
This year, President Donald Trump’s unpopularity alone may be enough to carry the day for Democrats. “Democrats essentially win this election by making it all about Trump,” said Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow and specialist in Congress at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
But if angry and impatient voters put Democrats back in a position of power and relevance, they will be expecting more. Steve Israel, a former congressman who headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2012 and 2014 elections, warned there is a danger for Democrats in “letting their antipathy to Trump overwhelm their focus on affordability.”
How much leverage the party will actually have when it comes to governing will depend on whether Democrats win both chambers and how big their majorities are. Their numbers surely will fall short of the two-thirds supermajority needed to overcome Trump’s veto, and probably Republican filibusters in the Senate. It is also true that on some of the toughest issues to tackle, there is no solid consensus, at least yet, within their own ranks.
So far, what Democrats in the House and Senate have put forward have largely been plans to hold Trump and his administration accountable, including by stepping up investigations employing the majority’s subpoena power, and to turn back many of his most unpopular and extreme actions.
Democrats expect to take some steps quickly if they regain a gavel or two. In a session with reporters last week, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) cited several issues where Democrats forced House votes during the current session but couldn’t get the measures passed in the Senate, much less to the president’s desk.
Jeffries indicated that Democrats could take up those issues again next year. Those would include extending expired tax credits that made coverage under the Affordable Care Act more affordable; revoking tariffs that Trump placed on Canada; restoring temporary protected status for Haitian migrants, and wiping out the president’s executive order terminating collective bargaining for federal employees.
But when it comes to bringing down the cost of living — what voters say is their top issue this year, and one upon which the speaker-in-waiting has promised to be “hyper-focused” — Democrats have offered no real plan of action. Instead, Jeffries has established five task forces to work on various areas of the problem: housing; gas and utilities; groceries and goods; caregiving, and health care.
Jeffries intentionally selected chairs for the working groups who represented both the more liberal and more centrist factions within the House Democratic Conference, which is also an indication that the Democrats are not yet unified on what to write into actual legislation.
For instance, on health care, would they put forward Medicare-for-all, a government-run health care system favored by their more liberal members, or shore up the Affordable Care Act, the path their moderates prefer?
“We’re focused right now on running through the finish line and making sure that we flip enough seats to take back the majority on November 3rd, and then we’ll aggressively prepare to get off to a fast start on January 3rd in the new Congress,” Jeffries said.
Similarly, Democrats have no real specifics on how to carry out their promise to end the unpopular war that Trump started with Iran. Nor is there clarity on how they would handle growing outrage in both parties over data centers, which has only recently come to the forefront as a major issue.
In the Senate, Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona), a potential 2028 presidential contender who released a detailed economic policy plan on Wednesday, said he did not think Democrats had done enough to articulate what they would do if they retook the chamber.
“We have taken some steps, talking about what we’re going to do to shore up Medicaid, increase wages, things of that nature,” Gallego said in an interview. “But we haven’t really been as solid as we should.”
Still, he added: “Republicans also have not said what they would do if they retain control of the Senate.”
Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.
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