Posted on 11/07/2022 6:01 am
(Image credit: Saul Loeb/AFP)
In addition to all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate, Joe Biden’s own governance and the political claims of former President Donald Trump are at stake in tomorrow’s general election. The latest polls suggest the Democratic Party will lose control of the House to the Republican Party, which has been in opposition since 2020, when Biden won and thwarted the tycoon’s reelection. The disaster could get even worse: the Democratic majority in the Senate is hanging by a thread, the polls show an open result. Experts believe that if the governing body loses control of the House of Representatives, Biden will have extreme difficulties governing and could become a “lame duck” a president with no expectations of power who, due to external circumstances, is unable to to actually rule.
Tomorrow’s election will come in the shadow of the 2020 election as Trump tried to stoke hatred from supporters by alleging fraud, even without evidence. Last Wednesday, Biden warned that not taking the poll results “paves the way for chaos.” “In a normal year we are not often faced with the question of whether our vote protects or endangers democracy,” said the President.
House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy slammed Biden for allegedly “failing to address the core concerns of Americans.” “Republicans will win convincingly and help put America back on track,” he tweeted. McCarthy’s optimism is shared by Trump. “Very, very, very likely I will do it again,” the former president said of another presidential bid. “Get ready, that’s all I’m saying. Coming soon,” he said Thursday night at a rally in Iowa. “We’re going to take back Congress, we’re going to take back the Senate. And in 2024 we will take back our great White House.”
David Nickerson, director of experiments for Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign and professor of political science at Temple University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), told the Courier that recent polls indicate a broad defeat for Democrats in the House of Representatives. “Control of the Senate is a lottery at this point. It seems very unlikely that Democrats will be able to retain a majority in both houses of Congress,” he predicted.
Regardless of the outcome of tomorrow’s vote, Nickerson said Republicans have undermined Biden’s ability to pass legislation by blocking bills in the Senate. “When Republicans gain control of the House of Representatives, they will block passage of all legislation and begin using their investigative powers to shame the Biden administration. If Republicans gain control of the Senate, Biden will not be able to appoint judges to the House Supreme Court because Republicans will refuse to confirm them,” he warned.
As such, the pundit is betting that Biden will struggle to fulfill much of his government plan and will be forced to use executive orders more often than Barack Obama. For David Barker, government professor and director of the Center for Legislative and Presidential Studies at American University, Democrats will almost certainly lose the House of Representatives likely about 25 seats and have a 50 percent chance of losing the Senate.
Barker believes Biden will be a “lame duck” in the last two years in office. “Presidents generally don’t do much in the second half of their term as attention tends to focus on the next election. If the Republicans take over one of the houses of Congress, Biden and the Democrats won’t be passing any significant legislation and will have significant power over foreign policy, and I hope he will focus all of his energies on that.”
caution
Timothy Patrick McCarthy, a professor of American history at Harvard University, credits manipulation and redistribution phenomena as a likely cause of the Democrats’ loss of control of the House of Representatives. Reelection of constituencies is the opportunity to change the constituencies that voters represent. The US Constitution requires that legislative districts have roughly equal populations. “Given the extreme number of Republican candidates and leadership in this election cycle, as well as other factors, I am cautiously optimistic that the Democrats will retain control of Congress,” he told the Courier.
McCarthy predicts the majority of the House of Representatives will be decided by a narrow majority, regardless of which party is in control. “I see an opportunity for Democrats to win between three and four Senate seats. There is an increase in Democratic turnout in early voting, new voter registrations, and poll results in narrower Senate races, particularly in Ohio, Carolina, North Florida, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia. This bodes well for the Democrats on the final stretch before Election Day,” he said.
In the event that Democrats lose control of the Senate and House of Representatives, McCarthy fears Republicans will do even worse to Biden than turn him into a lame duck. “They have made it clear that they intend to start impeachment proceedings why, I have no idea and they will seek to reverse or reverse everything the current government has achieved in the first part of its term,” he warned. If Republicans stay true to their promises, their return to power in Congress would pose a major threat to human rights, individual liberties, the rule of law and democracy, according to the Harvard professor. “We are on a steep descent here in the United States, and Republican majorities in Congress would make that slope even more slippery.”
Reporting by Correio Braziliense
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vantage points
Credit: Martha Stewart
By David Nickerson
knife
double edged
“Donald Trump has said multiple times that he will run for the US presidency again in 2024. I don’t think the fate of the GOP in the midterms will affect his decision. He moves to the beat of his own drum. A Victory in tomorrow’s election will be a doubleedged sword for Republicans: on the one hand, it could prevent Joe Biden from making further legislative gains, on the other hand, by opposing popular action, Republicans could anger a large constituency. .”
Director of Experiments for Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign and Professor of Political Science at Temple University in Philadelphia
By Timothy Patrick McCarthy
effort
politically
“I’m an exception in that I don’t think Donald Trump will make a serious attempt to retake the White House in 2024. He’s far more likely to be impeached than elected. More specifically, a defeat for the Democrats in tomorrow’s election could prompt an even greater effort to organize on the left and center to prevent Trump from having a chance to return to power. His reign was a disaster the first time. I have to believe that Americans are smarter. Despite the union of states, we are not yet sadists.”
Professor of American History at Harvard University