Supersize My Gridlock, Please?
Bill Moyers, President Lyndon Johnson’s White House press secretary, and host of an interview show on PBS, tweeted from his handle, @BillMoyersHQ: “If the GOP takes the Senate, climate change deniers will control key committees.”
Other veteran journalists, like Moyers, are doing their due diligence looking at how a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate would behave. Let me save them the trouble: A Republican Senate would be like voters saying, “Supersize my gridlock, please.”
What will your world, your state and your city be like after next Tuesday’s election? What will Capitol Hill be like? Actually, they will all be pretty much like they are now. There is no foreseeable “wave” that could give either party a win so big it changes how Washington works. (Or doesn’t work.)
Despite projections favoring a Republican win, responsible pollsters are adding a tiny speed bump: 10 of the top U.S. Senate races are too close to call. And the odds are we won’t know who will control the Senate until January 2015.
Because the Democrats’ margin in the Senate is slim (53-45), they need to keep most of their seats. So pundits give the edge to the Republicans. Yet, like the San Francisco Giants, Democrats are scrappers. They don’t give up. And with only 1 to 2 percentage points separating them from a win in about five races, they’re intent on battling to a win.
To my mind, the pundits have the odds upside down. Although the Democrats hold a slim margin in the Senate, it’s the Republicans who hold a slim margin in the close races. A 4 percent difference is within most polls’ margin of error. And there are, as mentioned, 10 races where the leader is “inches ahead” of the opponent.
Two of the races, in Georgia and my beloved home state of Louisiana, require the winner to corner 50 percent or more of the vote to win. Without that, there will be a run-off — in December for Louisiana; in January for Georgia. And in both states, the consistent polling results are that no candidate is within reach of the magic 50 percent figure, to win. Oh, and let’s not forget the possible recounts.
As for the House, out of 435 races, the venerated Cook Report rates only 26 House races as being a “toss up” — and Republicans currently have a 34-seat advantage (233-199) in this Congress (with three vacancies). Of these toss-up races, 19 are currently held by Democrats and seven by Republicans.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” is a French proverb that holds even roiling surface changes do not affect matters at a deeper level, except to solidify the status quo. If you just sighed, so did I.
But, let’s play Devil’s Advocate and assume the Republicans win both the U.S. Senate and the House by slim margins. What will change in national politics? Gridlock will worsen. Partisanship will be heightened because the next election season begins soon after.
Sigh, again. There must be a will to work with the other party that simply doesn’t exist in the current political culture.
We have gridlock today on two levels: between Republicans and Democrats, and between Republicans and tea party Republicans. Speaker John Boehner has followed the “Hastert Rule” of not attempting to pass legislation unless the majority of his party favor it. As a result, Boehner’s Congress has done less work than any in decades, because his own party is split.
If voters should have anything on their minds as they go to the polls, it should be “How hard did my representative work to end gridlock?” Or did he or she pick up a six-figure paycheck for essentially doing nothing? A Democratic majority in the Senate does not stand in the way of Republicans governing. They have their own severe gridlock that they haven’t been able to overcome. A Republican victory won’t change that.
Conservative (tea party) Republicans are salivating at the thought of having enough numbers to control their leaders. A Politico story this week was headlined, “Conservatives to Give Leaders Hell.” And, Roll Call featured a story that “a coup is brewing” to dump the head of the National Republican Committee, Reince Priebus. Boehner, himself, was the target of tea party Republicans during this Congress. If they gain in numbers, he could be gone.
Neither is embattled Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell guaranteed to be the next majority leader, should he win the toss-up race in Kentucky (that race isn’t about Republican vs. Democrat; it’s about McConnell vs. McConnell). McConnell’s leadership position is already so weakened by defiant members like tea party leader Sen. Ted Cruz that current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid opined he had no one to make a deal with in Congress.
If the Republicans take the Senate, we’ll have more gridlock, not less of it. They still need 60 votes to pass major legislation. Only the gridlock this time will come about after the gridlock between the Republicans has played out. More gridlock is not what voters want, but it might be all we have post-Election Day.
