Members-Only Article
I heard from a reader last night who thanked us for the latest episode of the podcast because of how it focused on possible scenarios after a GOP win on Tuesday. Then I heard from TPM Reader FT who essentially said, Okay, there’s all the polls and the election in Israel. And basically it looks like the right is winning and will win everywhere. What then? What comes next?
I’ve always been unashamedly into polls. As longtimers know, we ran PollTracker for years and only really stopped it because the other aggregators had such a total focus on polls that we simply couldn’t keep up with the state of the art when it was only a side assignment. People who read TPM are political people. And we’re interested. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But I take FT’s point.
I have been giving this quite a lot of thought and there aren’t easy answers. There aren’t a lot of pleasant answers. Let me kick off the conversation with a bit of big picture and then some specific points about how I see the next couple years.
First, history doesn’t end. We hear a lot about how we might lose our democracy in this election. No going back. That’s not how things work. We might lose it. Or, to be more specific, we might enter a period of degraded or superficial democracy in which the trappings and structures remain more or less in place but are fundamentally subverted. But if we lose it … well, then we’ll have to work on getting it back. This isn’t happy talk or Pollyannaish thinking. It’s reality. History doesn’t end. No matter how bad things get there’s a next day when you have to figure out what you do next. Nothing is ever fully solved or fully lost.
On the specifics, as Kate and I discussed yesterday, no matter what happens Tuesday the big thing is 2024. No matter how big GOP majorities might be after Tuesday, everything is backstopped for the next two years by Joe Biden’s veto.
Margins matter. Control isn’t strictly a binary issue. Keeping margins close is important because you need to start reclaiming those seats. And the more there are the harder it is.
The Senate matters because of judges. There’s lots of ancillary nonsense a GOP Senate can do. But the key thing is judges. Get a GOP majority and judicial confirmations will essentially grind to a stop. And if by chance there’s a Supreme Court vacancy … well, you know what happens. That’s why the Senate is really important.
What about investigations? Mostly, whatever. We’ve seen a couple cycles of this where Republicans take control and launch a ton of phony investigations. It’s a big bummer for the minor figures who get saddled with insuperable legal bills. It’s a distraction for the administration. But it’s really mostly sound and fury. And what if they find something really bad? Well, that will suck for whoever did something really bad. I am very, very skeptical that will happen. If it does, that’s what oversight is for.
As I mentioned a few days ago, I want people to stop worrying about impeachment. Either of the President, or of cabinet officials. Unless Republicans pull together a 67 seat majority on Tuesday — enough to remove someone from office — I just don’t care, and neither should you.
There is one looming possibility that is different from all of this. There’s a very good chance that a Republican House will drive the country into a debt default next year. They will likely set up a situation in which Joe Biden has to agree to repeal all the 2021 legislation and/or force big cuts to Social Security and Medicare or they push the country off the cliff. I sense there is zero appetite among Democrats nationwide or in the White House to even engage those discussions. I’m confident that Republicans will be willing to shoot the hostage. So I think a default will happen. The consequences of that will be cataclysmic, immediate and mostly unfixable. This isn’t something where people get furloughed for a few weeks. It’s the U.S. government declaring bankruptcy which will have all the impact you can imagine on its future ability to borrow money at low costs. And also, it’ll basically mean a global financial crisis.
There’s one thing to do about this: Solve the problem during the lame duck session of Congress if Democrats lose one or both houses. There will be a lot of handwringing. But it will absolutely have to happen. It will come down to Sinema and Manchin. It can be done through reconciliation. But they’ll have to agree. If they don’t, then frankly we’re totally screwed. Let’s hope they do.
But if you’re thinking about the what ifs, that’s the overriding thing. And it can be solved. So all attention should go to that. Other than that there is mostly a two year reprieve in which Joe Biden’s veto and control of the federal bureaucracy backstops most things. I’m not saying it’s no big deal. It’s a huge deal. But it entirely pales in comparison to 2024. If Republicans take the Congress and the White House you’ll have a national abortion ban on day one and that will only be the start. You’ll have a fundamental restructuring of the federal government and a concerted effort to overrule state governments in blue or purple states. Again, I’m not saying losing the Congress now isn’t a big deal. It is. I’m saying that mostly it needs to be seen in the context of what happens in 2024 and everything in the following two years will have to be with that in mind.
More later.
