Who will win? is a question that everyone wants to know, and the final midterm election polls can help us find an answer. Republicans or Democrats?
According to early indications, the Republican Party will soon regain majority rule in the US House of Representatives for the first time in four years. The Senate, the upper house of Congress, is still too close to call. It only takes a little math to figure out how it would play out in both chambers.
Only five seats out of the 435 in the House must be won by Republicans in order to gain a majority.
Republicans would only need to win six of the 35 races designated as toss-ups, according to the Cook Political Report, which analyzes elections, in order to take control of the majority.
Only 35 of the Senate’s 100 members are up for election this year, and there aren’t many hotly contested contests. Republicans would take over if there was a net change of one seat in their favor.
After these midterm elections, it is certain that Republicans will hold at least one chamber of Congress.
Washington has been under unanimous Democratic control for the past two years, but the balance of power in the city is about to change. For the next two years, American politics will be affected by these four very real implications.
The end of Joe Biden’s legislative agenda
Joe Biden and the Democrats were able to implement a pretty significant agenda during their two years in government, which included significant expenditure on social programs, healthcare, and the environment.
If Republicans were to win on Tuesday, everything would come to an end.
There is a prospect for some cooperation; for example, Republicans and Democrats worked together to pass legislation on infrastructure spending, technology investment, and gun control this year. Liberal agendas on abortion, education, and voting rights, on the other hand, are doomed to failure.
Republicans have their own goals, which include cutting government spending, securing the border, and obtaining fossil fuels. However, even if the Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress, Democrats will be able to obstruct legislation through the use of the filibuster rule in the Senate or Vice President Biden’s veto power in the White House.
Legislative deadlock will be the norm for the following two years.
Republicans get the power to investigate
Democrats have been in charge for the past two years, which has resulted in hearings on topics including abortion, healthcare, and voting rights as well as a thorough inquiry into the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The focus will quickly change if Republicans gain control of House committees.
A hearing into Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s connections to China’s business community has already been promised by House conservatives. They also want to investigate the immigration policy of the Biden administration, the US pullout from Afghanistan, and the causes of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
The evaluation of presidential nominations to the federal courts is handled by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Democrats have established a record for lifetime nominations of new judges over the past two years.
Expect the confirmation of Mr. Biden’s nominations to stall if Republicans also gain control of the US Senate. Furthermore, there is a significant likelihood that a Supreme Court vacancy won’t be filled until after the next presidential election.
Risk of government shutdowns
The US experienced a two-year respite from the chicken game that resulted in government shutdowns and a close call on the national debt thanks to Democratic control of Congress. The end of that is near.
Some Republicans are already threatening to compel Democrats to accept significant budget cutbacks, including Congressman Kevin McCarthy, who is likely to be elected House speaker if Republicans take the majority.
The US has never experienced a debt default. However, partial government shutdowns brought on by Congress’s inability to pass annual spending legislation have grown more frequent. It happened once under President Barack Obama, and again under the Trump administration.
Another government shutdown by the end of next year is quite likely if Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on a fundamental plan for federal spending.
Biden’s perilous path ahead
For Mr. Biden, having the Republicans dominate Congress would be a tough pill to swallow. After four stormy years with Mr. Trump as president, he ran for office as someone who could bring Americans together.
Instead, he will have to deal with a country that is more divided than ever, a hostile Congress, and the potential that Mr. Trump will run for president again.
Most presidents have electoral defeats in the middle of their first term. Losing the Congress will be interpreted as a symptom of Mr. Biden’s ongoing political weakness, despite the fact that some have recovered to win re-election. It might rekindle calls for him to hand over the presidency to a different Democrat when the 2024 presidential election season gets underway.
All of the president’s advisers affirm that he will run for re-election. The White House has previously disclosed that Mr. Biden will address the election results in a public speech on Wednesday.
How he responds to that speech and to the challenges that lie ahead will have a significant impact on how much support he receives from his own party to serve another four years in office.
