Congress: preparing for change

His warnings continued later in the day at the news conference. “They can play that game, but we can play it better,” Trump said. “All you’re going to do is end up in back-and-forth and backand-forth, and two years is going to go up, and we won’t have done a thing.”

Pelosi, at a news conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, said, “A Democratic Congress will work for solutions that bring us together, because we have all had enough of division.”

But the congresswoman added, “We have a constitutional responsibility to have oversight.”

In Beijing on Wednesday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that the US midterm elections are a US domestic affair, and the results will not change China’s view of bilateral ties.

In light of the importance of Sino-US relations, it is the common wish of farsighted people from the US to maintain a healthy and stable development of the relationship, Hua said at a daily news briefing.

That relationship benefits the peace, stability and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region as well as the world, she added. Hua said China is ready to work with the US to handle differences properly, promote cooperation on the basis of mutual benefit and push forward the development of bilateral ties in the right direction.

Jin Canrong, a professor and associate dean at the School of International Studies, Renmin University of China in Beijing, said given that the midterms often are viewed as a referendum on the sitting administration’s politics and policies, the result of the elections could foreshadow the trajectory of US politics for the next two years.

He said a polarized Congress likely would pose many obstacles for Trump, as Democrats could challenge Republicans’ domestic policies, including slowing or stopping the repeal of Obama-era healthcare programs, slowing some of Trump’s immigration policies and slowing or reversing the push against environmental regulations.

But Jin said the result is not likely to have much of an impact on US foreign policy.