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Democrats’ dream of total control of Congress is shattered. This means that if Donald Trump wins, he will hardly be able to be removed by the Supreme Court. And if Biden wins, his power will be severely limited by the Senate.
It appears that Democrats retain a majority in the House of Representatives after the election, while Republicans retain control of the Senate. Thus, the situation in both houses of the United States Congress will be more or less the same as before the elections.
Amid the still-indecisive situation about who will be president of the United States, it is clear that the result in Congress is a great disappointment for Democrats, who hoped to increase the majority in the House of Representatives and secure a majority in the Senate.
Instead, they appear to be losing seats in the House of Representatives and not securing enough Senate seats to win a majority.
This means that
If Democrats had won a large majority in both houses of Congress, they could have removed a reinstated Trump in a new round of Supreme Court trials. They can only forget that now, explains University of Oslo private law professor Geir Stenseth, who is an expert on the relationship between the American rule of law and democracy.
– If the Democrats in the House of Representatives initiate a new round of the Supreme Court, as a political signal, then in any case they will not be able to win in the Senate. In the previous round, only one Republican senator switched sides, Stenseth says.
– In that case, Trump must do something so authoritarian that several Republican senators feel pressured to do something, he continues.
US expert and advisor to the Civita think tank, Eirik Løkke, tells VG that he now considers any new Supreme Court process completely unlikely. In this sense, the status quo in Congress is a good result for Trump if he is reelected, but very bad for Biden if he wins.
– The Democrats had invested a lot to win the Senate and now they must be very disappointed. If Biden finally wins, he can always be blocked by Republicans in the Senate, says Løkke.
– On the other hand, if Trump is re-elected and the Republicans stay in the Senate, as it seems now, then the Democrats cannot stop, for example, the appointments of judges, he continues.
Senate
In the Senate, Democrats have seized two Republican seats, but that’s not enough. The Democratic candidate lost in Alabama and does not appear to have been successful in the other states where uniform races were predicted.
Lindsey Graham, Republican leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a close ally of President Donald Trump, won in South Carolina, where he was challenged by Jaime Harrison.
– You wasted a lot of money, says Graham.
He notes that his rival Harrison wasted up to $ 100 million on his election campaign.
“This is the worst return on investment in America’s political history,” he said.
Is not sufficient
Also in Iowa, Texas, and Montana, where Democrats hoped to win, Republicans held strong.
Control of the Senate is very important to the person who is elected president.
Senators approve candidates for positions in administration and government, and can have the president’s policy implemented or stopped.
Today, Republicans control the Senate for 53 seats to 47 for Democrats. Three or four seats could tip the majority, depending on who wins the presidential election, as the vice president can decide by tie.
Decline in the “house”
In the House of Representatives, Democrats today have a majority of 232 seats over Republicans 197, but now they appear to be losing at least six seats to Republican representatives.
A weaker majority will make it harder for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to rally troops around a common policy, as she will have fewer players to form a majority.
One of the Republican victories in the “House” is the inauguration of the seat by Democrat Collin Peterson in a Minnesota constituency. Peterson has held the seat for 15 terms, since 1991. Even when Trump won by a 31 percentage point margin in the 2016 constituency, Peterson managed to retain his seat, but has now lost to Republican Michelle Fiscbach.
Democrats also appear to be losing several other seats they won in 2018, in areas where Trump did so strongly in 2016, including in South Carolina, New Mexico and Oklahoma.
“The Squad” re-elected
However, on the bright side, Democrats may note that both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the three others known as “The Squad” have been re-elected to the House of Representatives.
Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan belong to the left in the Democrats and are fervent advocates for better health care for all, stricter climate measures and other progressive issues.
All four have been the target of a series of derogatory and racist verbal attacks by President Donald Trump and other Republican politicians in the past two years.
