On the menu today: If yesterday’s newsletter seemed particularly gloomy, fear not. Running the legislative branch is never easy, even under the best of circumstances, and if Democrats win control of the House and Senate this November, they are likely going to have a very rough time for the ensuing two years. Read on.
With Great Power Comes Great Difficulties
Don’t get me wrong; you’d rather face the problems of being in the congressional majority than keep dealing with the problems of being in the minority.
But if you’re a Democrat, you should savor these days and the likely big wins on Election Night. Because once you’re the majority, after a few days of celebrating, life gets harder. As one House Republican staffer put it to me after losing the majority decades ago, “Now we’re throwing the grenades, instead of catching them.”
I’ll have more to say on this topic on a forthcoming article in the print edition of NR. But if Democrats win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives or Senate, they “win” the fun of trying to get anything passed with an angry, frustrated, vindictive President Trump at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
And the threshold for a lasting Democratic Senate majority may well be 52 seats. If, after the midterms, the Senate has 51 Democrats and 49 Republicans, there will be intense discussions about Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman switching parties. If Fetterman did switch parties or vote to keep Thune as majority leader, it would turn it into a 50-50 split where Vice President JD Vance would break the tie, preserving the Republican majority.
Fetterman has repeatedly said he has no intention of switching parties; he only votes with the GOP’s position about a quarter of the time. (In the most recent 40 votes, he’s voted with the Democrats 90 percent of the time.) Nonetheless, Trump is talking up the possibility of Fetterman flipping to the Republicans, and it seems likely that no matter what happens in the next two years, Fetterman is either A) not running for reelection in 2028, or B) not running for reelection as a Democrat in 2028.
A little-noticed story from last month:
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) attended an exclusive retreat with executives from Fox News, traveling to Montana in July at the invitation of the network’s owners.
The event, hosted at the Murdoch family ranch the weekend of July 11, featured a panel on social media that Fetterman headlined with Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL), one of his closest GOP colleagues in the Senate. Three sources and Fetterman himself confirmed his attendance at the retreat.
When you’re hanging out at Rupert Murdoch’s ranch, you are not that interested in staying on warm and fuzzy terms with Democrats in Pennsylvania or anywhere else. And Republicans will likely offer everything up to renaming his home state “Fettermania” to entice him to switch sides.
Even with a Senate majority, Democrats would need 60 votes to get most legislation passed. Democrats might talk about nuking the filibuster, but Fetterman says he’s opposed to that. Assuming every other Democrat agrees to get rid of it, there is an enormous difference between Democrats winning 51 seats in the Senate this fall and winning 52 seats.
That also assumes every Democratic senator . . . er, sticks around. Vermont’s Bernie Sanders just turned 85. Maine’s “independent” who caucuses with the Democrats, Angus King, is 82. Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal and Massachusetts’s Ed Markey are 80, Vermont’s Peter Welch is 79 (in his state, he’s the young one!), and Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono will turn 79 on Election Day. Rounding out the top ten oldest Democratic senators is Massachusetts’s Elizabeth Warren (77), Oregon’s Ron Wyden (77), Rhode Island’s Jack Reed (77 next month), and New York’s Chuck Schumer (76 next month).
Everybody got their flu shots, right? It’s not surprising to see so many Democratic senators opposed to burning fossil fuels . . . because they’re so close to becoming it.
Almost all those states have Democratic governors or are likely to have Democratic governors after the midterms, so an unscheduled departure from Congress would not see them replaced by a Republican. (Note that Vermont has a Republican governor, Phil Scott, who has a good chance of winning reelection in November. But in the past, Scott has said he would abide by Vermont’s tradition of naming a replacement from the same party as the outgoing officeholder.) But if there’s a 52–48 Democratic majority, any absence creates even less margin for error on a party-line vote.
And this is just focusing on the Senate. We’ll see what the split in the House of Representatives is, but Republicans currently enjoy a 219 (Yes, I know Kevin Kiley is calling himself an independent these days) to 214 majority with two vacancies — one in a GOP-leaning seat in Texas, the other in a Democratic-leaning seat in Florida.
Maybe the Democrats will win a solid majority; DecisionDeskHQ is currently projecting Democrats win 235 seats and Republicans win 200. But if it’s closer, a narrow House margin means vacancies, absences, and special elections matter a lot.
Speaking of absences, the 2028 presidential race will begin roughly 20 minutes after the polls close on Election Day. I exaggerate slightly, but last cycle, Trump announced his presidential campaign one week after the midterm election, before the runoff in Georgia was complete. One way to stand out in a crowded field is to be the first candidate to announce his or her campaign.
In the House, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ro Khanna of California are likely to run for president in 2028.
In the Senate, we are likely to see presidential campaigns from New Jersey’s Cory Booker, Arizona’s Ruben Gallego, Arizona’s Mark Kelly, Connecticut’s Chris Murphy, Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen, Georgia’s Raphael Warnock, and Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin. (For what it’s worth, Georgia’s Jon Ossoff says he’s not running.) Don’t tell me these figures have no chance of winning the nomination; no power on earth is stronger than the delusion of a senator who looks in a mirror and sees a president staring back at him.
That’s seven senators who will be looking for opportunities to jet off to South Carolina, Nevada, or New Hampshire, who will be introducing their symbolic bills, and generally elbowing their way into the spotlight. And there’s a good chance that most of these senators will try to outflank their rivals by proposing ideas that are further and further to the left.
Then there’s the gap between the big dreams and vast ambitions of the Democratic Socialists of America candidates and the progressive grassroots, and what can realistically be accomplished with a Republican in the White House. And a certain prominent Democrat is not helping matters by talking up the sweeping changes Democrats should be able to enact if they control Congress.
“The work that we can do about winning back the House and the Senate is going to be on a number of things. For example, I believe that we need to expand the Supreme Court. We need more justices on the Supreme Court so that we can have a court that actually reinforces the spirit and principles behind the Constitution of the United States.”
Yes, that is former Vice President Kamala Harris.
In theory, all it takes to expand the Supreme Court is for the House and Senate to pass legislation making the change. Under Article I of the U.S. Constitution and the Necessary and Proper Clause, Congress has the direct power to set and alter the number of justices on the Supreme Court. Of course, that assumes the legislation would not be vetoed by Donald Trump. And who would be appointing those justices until January 20, 2029? Trump, even if a Democratic-controlled Senate is just about certain to reject any of his nominees.
Passing this would mean that the next time Republicans have control of the House, the Senate, and the presidency, they would just expand the number of justices on the court to an even larger number to ensure a majority of their preferred justices.
Schumer and Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spent much of the past two years being hated by the grassroots because they supposedly weren’t effective enough at fighting Trump. A Democratic congressional majority will have some leverage through the budget, appropriations, debt limit, and confirmation process, but Trump will continue to be Trump for the next two years, consistently finding new ways to outrage, antagonize, and immiserate progressive Democratic voters. The best night of a new Democratic congressional majority may well be Election Night.
ADDENDUM: Get to know Zhong Lun, one of the biggest and most well-connected law firms in China, and the former employer of new White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia.