The Republicans are beginning to make frightened, unhappy noises about the upcoming midterm elections, and one hesitates to tell them they’re wrong to be afraid. President Donald Trump’s popularity is at or around its all-time low, the party’s popularity is in comparable territory, and the Democrats are sitting comfortably ahead in generic ballot polling. A Virginia redistricting scheme passed on referendum this week; if it holds up in court, it is likely to secure some number of new congressional seats for the blue team, much like a similar referendum in California last November. While the Democrats’ own dismal popularity (below Trump’s!) is of some comfort, not to mention a broadly favorable Senate map, there’s plenty to make the GOP mood pretty glum these days.
Far be it from me to diminish the genuine personal distress arising from job insecurity for any given individual congresscritter, but at the level of government, I am very tempted to say that it doesn’t actually matter much. The White House (let alone the congressional GOP as an independent body) doesn’t seem to have much of a legislative agenda in the post–Big Beautiful Bill era; while there are occasional wistful suggestions of passing some sort of statutory immigration reform, most of the administration’s priorities are being served more or less by unilateral executive action. Nor would statutory immigration reform be a given even if the GOP held on to Congress; there is a reason that moderate but effective measures like national E-Verify mandates never seem to make their way to the floor. The Chamber of Commerce and the farm lobby still have a lot of clout in the party.
Even with tailwinds from redistricting, under current alignment it is basically impossible for either party to secure a veto-proof majority, so the country can breathe easy in the face of whatever demented program the Democrats are cooking up in Ken Martin’s basement. And there is no guarantee that it won’t be pretty, pretty demented—the death of woke has been highly overstated, and the catastrophic economic distortions of Bidenomics have not discouraged the blue team from clinging on to ever-more-expensive-sounding subsidy policies and ever-more-European-sounding antigrowth policies. The Democrats’ apathy and fecklessness is perhaps second only to the peculiarities of Trump the man as one of the conditioning factors of the current political moment.
What’s left? Basically, harassment by oversight. It seems like a safe bet that the Democrats will raise the big top for another impeachment circus; the only uncertainty is over what. (The lack of AUMF for the Iran War, the Venezuela caper, and the 12-Day War was a likely-looking option, but the failed war powers votes make it a less clean hit.) They make select committees, hale in various administration officials over this or that alleged peccadillo, and generally make a lot of noise. But, while these proceedings can be embarrassing and waste the administration’s time, dollars to donuts they aren’t actually going to accomplish anything concrete. The GOP has demonstrated that, while it isn’t always terribly happy about it, it will always stick by its man, Trump. And even if other officials are removed, well, does that actually matter when the White House itself is the sole center of executive policymaking?
This isn’t exactly what you’d call healthy government along constitutional lines. It also raises the question of whether rule by executive decree is actually a sustainable model in a time when the White House is hotly contested between national two factions of basically equal size. Polly-put-the-kettle-on, Polly-take-the-kettle-off policy makes it very difficult to implement the sorts of strategic, long-term measures that everyone seems to think the country needs in this century; swinging between mutually exclusive regulation is also highly disruptive in an era when the government has a massive amount of influence on economic and even private life. But it seems unlikely that Congress is going to decide it would like its power back any time soon—isn’t it funny that Madison was basically wrong about human nature, and that the members of the legislature will actively shirk power if they can also shirk responsibility?—and we must take the good with the bad.
The good for the GOP is that a loss in the midterms will not be the stuff of catastrophe for the Republicans or the Trump agenda; nor will it be unwelcome, looking toward 2028, for the nationally loathed Democrats to have a larger stage on which to make themselves hated than the one they have danced on in these two years of unified government. While this might be an indictment of the Republicans’ poverty of vision—this was once the party of smaller and constitutional government—it will have to do for now.
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