US elections are coming up, and I’m reading a lot of people saying some pretty dumb shit. Here’s a quick summary for anyone who’s interested:
• In the last 50 years, only Bush in 2002 managed to hold onto the House of Representatives. For some reason, Americans love voting for the opposition in midterm elections. Right off the bat, Trump had basically lost this year’s House elections. Everyone knew it. No surprises there.
• This year, the Supreme Court struck down laws in southern states that created “special” districts to give African Americans more representation—votes that generally go 90% to the Democratic Party. This measure heavily favored Republicans, but the Supreme Court left most redistricting for the next election. If it had happened this year, there was a shot at winning, but once it got delayed, any hope was lost.
• The Senate is the real litmus test for this election. When Biden held onto the Senate in 2022, all the media said he’d won the midterms. In this case, the bar should be the same. For Trump to hold the Senate, he needs to win at least 2 out of 4 key races: Texas, Ohio, Alaska, and Michigan. Anything can happen. They’re extremely tight races.
• Winning the Senate is a symbolic victory, but it doesn’t mean ABSOLUTELY any change in the legislative dynamics of Trump’s government. In the United States, there’s this thing called the filibuster, which means any law to pass needs an expanded quorum of 60 senators (when a simple quorum would be 51). This means unless you have 60 senators, you have to negotiate every law with the opposition, so having 49 or 51 is basically the same.
• A Senate victory would be important for the narrative and to claim Trump “won the election,” but in practice, unless the Democrats get 60 senators, it won’t change much. In fact, Obama had the Senate against him from 2015 to 2017, and Congress couldn’t touch his administration one bit.
• Losing control of the House, beyond having to put up with a lefty House Speaker sitting behind you at the State of the Union, wouldn’t change much for Trump. Even today with a majority, Trump had to fight for months over the Budget and faced one of the hardest shutdowns in US history. The same thing will happen in 2027 and 2028, no matter who wins this election.
• The only downside to a Democrat-controlled House is that it becomes the breeding ground for all political operations against Trump, like impeachment pushes. Trump went through 3 political trials in his first term. He’ll probably go through at least 3 more by 2029, but that’s to be expected. In the Senate, Democrats would need 66 votes to boot him from the presidency. It’s not gonna happen.
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