Improved politics aren’t likely soon
AT an event this week in Philadelphia, former Vice President Joe Biden predicted the midterm elections would give Democrats control of the Senate and the House, which in turn would ease the pressure that Republicans “who know better” feel to support President Trump.
“I think you’re going to see a significant change in the politics of the country,” Biden said. We’ll offer a prediction of our own: That’s not going to happen.
If Democrats win control of both chambers, the politics in evidence today — venom-filled and hyperpartisan — will only get worse.
In a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, for example, Nancy Pelosi and her charges would likely pursue impeachment of President Trump. Pelosi’s leadership team has cautioned Democrats not to use the i-word on the campaign trail, out of concern it could backfire. But as a story on Politico noted last month, many believe there is ample material to pursue impeachment, “and privately, many Democrats think they would eventually do so if they seize the majority.”
Think things are ugly now? Wait’ll that drama unfolds.
Or consider the ramifications of a Democratic-controlled Senate. As the minority party, Democrats have shown what they’re willing to do to keep Judge Brett Kavanaugh from replacing Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court.
After ridiculous histrionics by Democrats during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dianne Feinstein, waited until the eleventh hour to produce a letter she had received several weeks earlier from a woman who said Kavanaugh forced himself on her 36 years earlier.
That was followed by two others accusers whose stories are shaky at best but are taken as gospel by the Democratic “resistance.” The goal, of course, is to derail Kavanaugh’s nomination, or failing that, to delay the Senate’s vote until after the midterms. Senate leader Mitch McConnell has vowed that the latter won’t happen.
McConnell needs to hope Kavanaugh makes it to the finish line, because if Democrats win control of the Senate, he may well be the last Trump nominee who gets across it. Many Democratic senators, fearful of a conservative shift in the court following Kennedy’s departure, said before Trump announced this selection that they wouldn’t support the nominee. A number then followed up by not even providing Kavanaugh the courtesy of meeting with him.
If Kavanaugh isn’t confirmed, and if Democrats win the Senate in November, then it’s not going out on a limb to assume the Supreme Court would have to manage with eight justices through at least the 2020 presidential election.
Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald F. Seib wrote Tuesday that given what’s transpired with Kavanaugh, and in 2016 with the Republicans’ icing of former President Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland, it’s reasonable to ask: “In the future, will any party be able to convince a Senate controlled by the opposition to confirm a Supreme Court nominee?”
It’s no wonder, then, that polls show the public’s confidence in Congress has plummeted. Seib noted the annual Edelman Trust Barometer, which gauges confidence in institutions around the world, found “a staggering lack of faith” in the U.S. government.
The chances that changing control of Congress will