The Divided Government Moment

· Reason

Two cheers for divided government? It's Election Day, and all signs point to victory for Democrats. Nate Silver's FLIPR model, which blends polling with fundamentals, gives Democrats an 82.4 percent chance of winning the Senate and a 96.4 percent chance of winning control of the House. Both Kalshi and Polymarket show Democrats as strong favorites to win both chambers of Congress. 

It's always possible that polls, prediction markets, and other models are wrong. In recent years, pollsters have had trouble reaching the white, rural voters who now form the core of the Republican Party base. But the Democratic advantage in the polls has been growing in recent days. And as Silver notes, even if the polls overestimate Democratic strength by a few points, their lead is so large that they could still win. The blue wave (probably) cometh. 

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The question is what Democrats will do with their newfound majorities.

On this week's Reason Roundtable, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, Matt Welch, and I discussed what we can expect Democrats to do to us once they regain power. 

Perhaps they'll rein in Trump's power on tariffs and war. But just as likely, they'll take symbolic votes to register their opposition to Trump's array of unpopular policies and then spend a lot of time grandstanding. Expect a lot of hearings. 

One way of looking at this election is as a referendum on the economy. Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the current state of the economy, more so, even, than during the Great Recession. (Whether they should be so dour is another question. But they are.) 

Another way of looking at the likely blue tide is as a vote to check Trump's power.

That is the takeaway from a recent Wall Street Journal poll: "A majority of voters say they want a candidate for Congress who will put guardrails on Trump's powers, and a majority prefers a candidate who will vote to end the war with Iran. Even many Republicans, the poll found, say they will back GOP candidates for Congress but still prefer a candidate who would provide a check on the president." 

Divided government, as we are likely to have after today's election, doesn't solve every political problem. It probably doesn't even solve most of them.

But it does create an adversarial relationship between Congress and the executive branch. And that adversarial posture might make it more difficult for either Congress or the president to muck things up too much. Remember checks and balances? That was a good idea! 

Closing arguments: With Americans clearly signaling frustration with the economy, inflation, and the price of food and gas in particular, you might have expected President Donald Trump to spend the final days before the election talking about how he'd solve those problems. 

Instead, Trump decided to make his final election pitch at the Reflecting Pool, where he bragged about a recent renovation that, after some fits and starts, mostly left the pool in the same shape it was to begin with. At a speech yesterday afternoon, Trump mused about renaming the pool after himself. Typical. Maybe the White House has secret polling data showing there are a lot of Reflecting Pool voters? 

Meanwhile, the Department of Education is posting Malfoid fanfic memes (don't ask). And over the weekend, the online right decided to meme-cast themselves as Anakin Skywalker, the moody young Jedi who slaughtered a bunch of sensitive children before going on to become arguably the most notorious villain in modern pop culture, Darth Vader. 

As a closing argument, it's nuts on every level. Do they really think there are so many fans…of the prequels? (Sorry, Robby Soave.) 

I kid. But it's an open question who any of this is really for. Does any of this speak to the concerns of ordinary voters who are concerned about the economy and might be wary of pulling the lever for the GOP? What is going on here? 

I think the simplest explanation is that Trump's signature policies—the war in Iran, the on-again-off-again tariff regime that has driven up prices, the immigration raids that have resulted in chaos and killings on America's streets—are simply indefensible. Or at least they are impossible to defend on the terms that today's Republicans have decided to abide by. 

No one in the president's orbit is even trying. Not even Vice President J.D. Vance. Vance has spent the last few weeks lamely attempting to redefine socialism, probably because socialism as it is usually defined would include many of Trump's own policies. Vance's closing argument was a dubious, evidence-free warning about illegal immigrant voting schemes.

Again, none of this is responsive to the concerns voters have about high prices and pointless war. 

But to address those concerns directly would require Republicans to do the one thing they have spent a full decade proving they absolutely will not do: forcefully critique Trump and his destructive, counter-productive policies. They have fully abdicated that responsibility. So now it looks as if voters will level that critique themselves, at the ballot box. 

Scenes from Washington, D.C. There isn't much to like about Trump's second term. But Democratic governance hasn't exactly been great either, especially in Washington, D.C. And I fear that if anything, under the next regime, it will be worse. 

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