Tuesday, December 10th. Jon Fuhrman
It’s hard to be sanguine about the upcoming Administration. Four years gives them a lot of time to impose their vision and dreams despite our best efforts to oppose them. I do believe, however, that if we give them enough rope, they will surely hang themselves. In the process, though, many folks are likely to be hurt.
So I have a few thoughts as the new Administration unfolds. First and foremost, the President-elect most certainly did NOT receive a mandate. Yes, the GOP won the Presidency and took control of the Senate, and they kept control of the House. But the President-elect did not win a majority of the popular vote. Further, the Reps lost two seats in the House, hardly a sign of a mandate (and they would have lost the House were it not for an outrageous gerrymander in North Carolina). We held key Senate seats in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona. And they lost many key state-level races. Look at North Carolina as an example – Dems kept the Governorship (where Democrat Josh Stein actually got more votes than Donald Trump did), flipped the Lt. Gov. seat, kept the Attorney-General seat, kept the Secretary of State seat, kept a Supreme Court seat, flipped the Supt. of Public Instruction, and eliminated the GOP super-majority control in the State Assembly (so the Legislature can no longer override gubernatorial vetoes). Clearly, Democrats are not yet out of the game.
Those narrow GOP margins are starting to play out, both in the confirmation battles in the Senate and in legislative planning in the House. The House, in particular, will be dicey for the GOP, as their margin sinks to 217 – 215 for the first three months of next year while we wait for special elections to replace GOP members who resigned (Matt Gaetz) or are taking posts in the new Administration. That means any one desertion from the GOP side can sink a rules vote (a necessary predicate to bringing legislation to the floor). Thus the Freedom Caucus can demand greater deficit reduction, or the New York – New Jersey SALT tax caucus (those who want to liberalize the deductions allowed for State and Local Taxes on your federal income taxes) can demand a better deal on tax reform (which adds to the deficit), or the traditional national security hawks can demand more money for Ukraine or for general defense spending, or pretty much anyone can demand pretty much anything for their pet project.
This narrow margin also highlights the importance of special elections to replace the departing members. The two Florida elections are in overwhelmingly GOP districts, but the New York special, to replace Elise Stefanik, is in a R+9 district – not entirely out of the range for a Democratic win. Given the likelihood that the President-elect will issue a barrage of Executive Orders on Day 1, some of which are likely not just to be controversial but also to backfire quite noticeably, and given that special elections can be quite quirky and deliver unexpected results, it’s not inconceivable that Dems could pull out an upset victory. That would not only further complicate life for Speaker Johnson, but it would also shift the entire momentum on Capitol Hill, undermining the sense of inevitability of the GOP’s proposed policies.
Three other quick thoughts on how our whole political environment is changing. One particularly troubling development in the last election was the erosion of Democratic support within the Latino community. Rather than try to diagnose the causes, I’d look forward, and backward. You may remember that in 1994, California had a ballot proposition 187, sponsored and supported by Republicans, which would have required the state to take action against undocumented residents, excluding them from schools, public benefits and non-emergency health care, and requiring local police agencies to investigate and report on the status of suspected undocumented residents. That proposition, passed but later invalidated by the Federal courts, is generally considered to have pushed the Latino community overwhelmingly into the Democratic camp. While it might be helpful to understand why many Latinos supported the GOP this cycle, I suspect that we can count on the new Administration to do their own version of Prop. 187. Their immigration control policies will quickly morph into much broader-ranging arrest, detention and deportation schemes, with inevitable mistakes (like deporting naturalized or native-born citizens), and these excesses will, for years to come, drive Latino voters away from the GOP.
Secondly, on President Biden’s pardon of his son, a number of commentators have argued that it sets an extremely bad precedent and will empower the President-elect further to abuse the system. I disagree totally. In a bygone era, when Presidents actually cared about precedents and norms and ethics, that might have been true. Unfortunately, though, we are now way beyond that. The new President doesn’t need any justifications, any groundings in history or law, to do whatever he wants to do. He’ll just do it. Guardrails are gone, the concept of ethics is entirely alien to the President-elect, there are be no self-imposed limits. So hang on to your seats, it’s going to be a rocky ride.
Finally, and in a related vein, I don’t think the idea of blanket pardons by President Biden for those clearly identified as being on the “enemies list” (like the January 6th Committee in the House) is a good idea. It’s too vague, could too easily be contested. I do think, however, that one area the liberal community needs to look at is creating a fund to underwrite the legal expenses of those who may be targeted by the incoming Administration. The point of prosecutions is not so much actually to convict someone as it is to bankrupt their family with huge legal expenses. The liberal and donor community can effectively “immunize” those targeted by the Administration by providing or underwriting the necessary legal representation. My guess is that if the faux prosecutions do not inflict pain and suffering on their intended victims, then the Administration will soon tire of the game and move on to other exploits.
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