For a casual observer of politics, the Democratic Party of the United States should easily sweep to power in the upcoming midterm elections this November in both houses of Congress.
Many assume that since U.S. President Donald Trump is a divisive leader, Republicans cannot retain their current majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate under his leadership. However, while the House is predicted to fall into Democrat control, winning the Senate is far less likely for the Democrats. To understand why Democrats need to control the Senate, we need to look at the role the Senate plays.
The Senate is comprised of 100 elected senators, with two from each state. One key responsibility of the Senate is to vote on the president’s nominees for federal positions, such as the Supreme Court. In rare circumstances, they will conduct trials on a federal official impeached by the House of Representatives. Outside of the presidency, the Senate is one of the highest offices in the country.
What specifically could Democrats do with a majority in the Senate to challenge the president?
First, with the power to vote on presidential nominees, Democrats could halt the appointment of justices like Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee who is likely to be approved in upcoming weeks by the Republican-controlled Senate, is a conservative judge who made it clear he would vote to overturn the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade if a legal challenge is brought to the Supreme Court. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, millions of American women could lose access to safe and informed abortion.
The importance of this can’t be understated. The current tie of three Republican and three Democratic justices on the Supreme Court would break, giving Republicans a majority upon Kavanaugh’s approval. If Democrats are able to take the Senate, they could gain control of the Supreme Court the next time a replacement justice is needed. Without controlling the Senate, however, the highest level of the judiciary in the country will favour Republican ideologies and cost Democrats for decades down the line.
Democrats would also be able to attempt to impeach Trump if they commanded both houses of Congress. Impeachment is a process where the House votes to remove a federal official from office, and then the Senate conducts trials and holds a final vote on whether to approve the impeachment.
Unfortunately, partisanship is rampant in the decision to impeach a sitting president. With a new scandal hitting Trump nearly every day, and growing tension surrounding Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, some Democrats are beginning to openly discuss impeaching the president. Without control of both houses of Congress, however, those discussions will be kept out of mainstream Democrat politics until 2020, where Trump still remains a slight favourite for re-election.
Democrats will be able to introduce strong legislation to counter Trump’s policies with control of the House of Representatives, but it appears unlikely that they will be able to gain the two or more seats they need for a Senate majority. They are defending 10 seats in states that Trump won in 2016, and Republicans are overall defending fewer and safer seats than their Democrat opponents.
If the Democrats continue on their current path, they will remain in the opposition role in the Senate—criticizing policy, but unable to directly prevent or halt the damage caused by Trump.
The Senate is meant for checks and balances—it is time to level out the seesaw and take control so that Democrats can effectively challenge the most extremist Republican president in modern history.
