In an unsurprising (but disappointing all the same) development, Americans have handed control of the House of Representatives to the Democrats for the next two years. Republicans, however, have tightened their grip on the Senate, picking up seats there. My initial thoughts:
- Pelosi, Waters and their crew will use their restored subpoena power to make the administration as miserable as possible until 2021. Buckle up for the ugliness. That said, Democrats are probably regretting the precedents Obama’s administration set of ignoring such requests from Congress. Trump won’t have forgotten that. What goes around…
- Retaining control of the Senate means the administration can continue building what may be Trump’s most enduring legacy: resetting the Judiciary by appointing judges who view the Constitution through an ‘originalist’ lens and are less likely to engage in policy direction by judicial fiat. The impact of these appointments will be felt for decades.
- There will be no funding for a border wall any time soon, unless Trump tries to coopt Defense Department money through Executive direction. At the same time, the Senate will be able to prevent Democrats from undoing very much of the last two years (tax cuts, deregulation, etc).
- There are still strong rumors (especially from the “Q” quarter) that ongoing investigations into prominent Democrats may soon yield indictments and the full declassification of the FISA court shenanigans. One theory is that Trump held off pulling the trigger on these so as to avoid accusations of politicizing the investigations during an election cycle. If true, that’s likely a wise move. It also means the Democrats may soon be more on the defensive than their win of the House would normally indicate.
- It will be instructive to see what independent counsel Robert Mueller’s next move is. He, too, is said to have held back during the election season. With that over, I suspect he’ll be under increasing pressure from both sides to show his hand and “put up or shut up.”
In short, while disappointing, I don’t yet see last night’s results as a full-blown disaster. As many pundits noted, the President’s party usually loses seats in Congress during his first midterm election. There is one ominous thing to point out, however. Overall the Democrats ran a much more openly leftist/globalist agenda this cycle… and they still picked up considerable support. That a candidate like Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke could challenge Ted Cruz so strongly in Texas is not a good long-term signal. Nor is having Florida’s gubernatorial and Senate races within a percent of each other. (Related note: the vast majority of Beto’s funding came from outside Texas, something that in my mind should be prohibited. Residents of one State have no business trying to buy elections in another one.) We are a deeply divided nation with two incompatible worldviews vying for dominance through government force.
Demography and the long-term effects of leftist indoctrination in our education system are having the intended effects. That’s why this Trump period is so important. So far it has been the only successful push back against the Left’s “long march” of the past three decades. But unless traditional Americans break the lock the globalists have on the education of the next generation, it’s only a matter of time before an ignorant population rejects the birthright their ancestors worked so hard to achieve.
“When an opponent declares, “I will not come over to your side,” I calmly say, “Your child belongs to us already… What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.” Adolph Hitler, May 1937
A True Progressive 