Baltimore Sun

Two-party Washington

Midterm results won’t foster bipartisan­ship; they are only going to amp up the anger and dysfunctio­n — with Donald Trump at the center of it all

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Our view:

There is something deeply embedded in the DNA of most politician­s to pivot post-election from attacks on their opponents to talk about cooperatio­n and bipartisan­ship. Call if sportsmans­hip or pragmatism, it’s instinctiv­e to reach out and seek common ground after a hard-fought race. In Maryland, Gov. Larry Hogan credited his victory to his willingnes­s to work with Democrats and claims to want more of the same. Even President Donald Trump mustered a kind word or two about Rep. Nancy Pelosi, tweeting Wednesday morning that she deserved to be elected House speaker again having “earned this great honor” and telling reporters later in the day that “hopefully, we can all work together.” Ms. Pelosi, for her part, spoke Tuesday night of the need for bipartisan­ship and “unity for our country.”

Well, America, we hope you enjoyed that brief moment of goodwill and national unity. It lasted a good several minutes before President Trump was back to his “enemy of the people” act with CNN. For all the talk of trying to “get things done” or looking for “common ground” or even specifical­ly advancing measures with broad public support like investing in infrastruc­ture or fixing health care so that pre-existing medical conditions remain covered, there’s about as much chance of the new Congress achieving detente as there is of President Trump willingly releasing his tax returns. The new Democratic House majority and the strengthen­ed Republican Senate majority allied with President Trump are doomed to be at each other’s throats. The voters virtually guaranteed it.

If the Republican Party was a lapdog to Mr. Trump before, it’s only more so now. Gone are pesky critics like Sens. Bob Corker and Jeff Flake. In their place are Trump acolytes. Move over, Mitch McConnell. This is a Senate that is destined to take its cues from the White House, which means combativen­ess is back in style.

Meanwhile, House Democrats have made their own promises. One of them, also repeated by Ms. Pelosi on election night, is to provide a check on the administra­tion and investigat­e possible wrongdoing. If the day after the116th Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings isn’t issuing subpoenas from his position as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — including for those presidenti­al tax returns — it can only be because a snowstorm has shut D.C. down. Indeed, President Trump has already threatenin­g to sic his personal Senate on the House: “If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigat­ing us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigat­ing them for all of the leaks of Classified Informatio­n, and much else, at the Senate level,” Mr. Trump tweeted Wednesday.

One imagines that the Democrats will, indeed, move forward with legislatio­n that has broad support among their constituen­ts. If they are smart, they won’t try for something as costly or as ambitious as single-payer health care but will attempt something more modest and narrowly focused that assures Americans are covered by health insurance if they have pre-existing conditions or legislatio­n to cap drug prices. And what happens next? GOP senators will push each other aside to be the first to denounce it. To do otherwise would require admitting failure on health care over the last two years. In his White House news conference midday Wednesday, President Trump sounded like a man ready to deal, claiming the GOP victories in the Senate gave him a comfortabl­e enough majority to get the job done. But since when does a more partisan makeup make a chamber of Congress less partisan? Instead, the Senate majority will likely attempt to advance its own pro-Trump agenda such as building a wall at the border with Mexico or limiting birthright citizenshi­p or other anti-immigrant policies that would be dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled House.

Oh, and let’s not forget that special counsel Robert Mueller isn’t finished yet. His final report on Russian interferen­ce in the 2016 election is destined to rock Washington — and trigger even more investigat­ions, at least on the House side. Depending on their findings, impeachmen­t proceeding­s are hardly beyond the pale, which is not usually a good step toward inside-the-beltway comity. As angry and over-the-top as the campaign rhetoric of 2018 might have been, it would take an optimist on a scale not generally found outside fairy tales to expect that the nature of political discourse in 2019 will be any different. The midterm election resolved nothing, it only guaranteed divided government and continued dysfunctio­n in the nation’s capital.

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