The Importance of …

The US election today is more than a two horse race. Guest blogger Edward (Ned) York explains what is at stake and what the implications are.

THE IMPORTANCE OF WINNING CONTROL OF THE U.S. SENATE

Equally as consequential as the contest for the White House between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is the battle for control of the United States Senate. Which political party triumphs will have a profound impact upon what the new President—be he a Republican or be she a Democrat—will be able to accomplish during the next two year session of Congress and beyond. There will be far reaching implications should Clinton become President and the Democrats gain control of the Senate versus Clinton facing off against a Republican controlled Senate. Conversely, there will be an enormous difference should Trump be elected and the Republicans maintain the majority in the Senate as opposed to Trump confronting a newly captured Senate by the Democrats.

Since I have previously predicted a Clinton victory (6 November post U.S. Election Update), I will contrast the potential outcomes of the beginning of her administration depending upon whether the Republicans or the Democrats control the Senate. For the purpose of this post, I will confine myself to discussing only the Senate since I assume that the House of Representatives will continue with a Republican majority.

In order to understand the different implications of the Senate being controlled by the Republicans as opposed to the Democrats, we must first take a step back and acquaint ourselves with the role the Senate plays within the U.S. political system and how Senate elections occur.

The American government is composed of three equal branches of government: the “Executive” branch which is the President and his/her administration, including Cabinet secretaries and officers; the “Judicial” branch represented by the Supreme Court and lower courts; and, the “Legislative” branch composed of the bicameral chambers of Congress—the House of Representatives and the Senate. Each of these branches have separate but also overlapping responsibilities.

While the House of Representatives exercises its most important function as the originating branch of the annual governmental budgets, the Senate has key advice and consent powers, including consenting to foreign treaties as a precondition to their ratification; consenting to and confirming appointments of Cabinet secretaries, federal judges, other federal executive officials, senior military officers, regulatory officials, ambassadors; and, holding trials of federal officials who are impeached by the House. The Senate is widely considered a more deliberative and a more prestigious body than the House of Representatives, due to its longer terms, smaller size and statewide constituencies. Senators serve six year terms each; the terms are staggered so that approximately one-third of the seats are up for election every two years. There are only 100 Senators—two from each of the fifty states, regardless of an individual state’s size—in contrast to 435 Representatives, each of whom represents approximately 725,000 people within their respective state’s districts.

Historically and until recently, the Senate was often (smugly, arrogantly?) described as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” Yet, since 1992 and over the course of the next 24 years, whenever the President was of a different party from the party which had a majority in the Senate, the Senate successfully—but, in my estimation, rather shamefully—transformed itself into the “world’s greatest obstructionist body.” This has occurred six times—12 years—but has been far more pronounced during the eight years when the Democrats were in the White House and the Republicans controlled the Senate. (6 years when Bill Clinton was President and the last 2 years of the second Obama administration) This obstructionism has been characterized as mindless, uncompromising, and has made a mockery of the important role the Senate plays in the functioning of the United States government. The Republicans have sought to undermine and call into question the very legitimacy of Democrats as Presidents. This intransigence has chipped away at the bedrock of American democracy and represents a dereliction of duty to work toward the common good and betterment of society. Clearly, they have put political partisanship above the wider and more important interests of the country as a whole.

To cite two recent examples of Republicans earning the well deserved epitaph of “The Party of No”: Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell summed up his party’s objective in 2010: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” And, with the death this past year of Anthony Scalia which created a vacancy on the Supreme Court, the current Republican dominated Senate has refused since March 16th to consider conducting hearings for Obama’s well qualified candidate Merrick Garland until a new President is inaugurated on January 20, 2017.

At present, the Senate is split with 46 seats held by Democrats and 54 seats held by Republicans. On Election Day November 8th, 34 seats will be contested, of which Republicans will be defending 24. If the Democrats continue to hold onto all their seats, they will need to pick up 4 of the current Republican seats. (If Clinton wins the Presidency, Tim Kane, her Vice President, will assume the role as presiding over the Senate and being called upon to cast any tie vote in the Senate.) How realistic is it to imagine the Democrats prevailing and capturing the Senate during the next session of Congress? Of course, we won’t know until all the votes have been counted. However, a critical factor will be whether Clinton’s has political “coattails.” (The coattail effect is the tendency for a popular political party leader to attract votes for other candidates of the same party down ballot in an election.) A number of respected pundits do believe that Clinton will have a down ballot effect and consequently put the Democrats chances at 50/50 with 5 seats in the “toss up” category.
The Republicans have had a particular nasty antipathy to the Clintons. Even more than her husband or President Obama—indeed, more than any politician within anyone’s memory—Hillary Clinton evokes a seething, blind hatred from those on the opposite side of political spectrum. This is especially difficult to understand in light of Clinton’s notably successful efforts at bipartisanship while she was in the Senate, as well as her history of centre-right policy views that positioned her very much on the right end of Bill Clinton’s administration. Mrs. Clinton famously stated in 1998 that there was a “vast right-wing conspiracy” whose primary purpose has been and continues to be part of a long campaign by the Clintons’ political enemies. Indeed, several Republicans have already vowed to not hold any hearings throughout her administration for Clinton’s choice(s) for Supreme Court if the Republicans maintain control of the Senate. And, Donald Trump declared that he may not even accept the result of the Presidential election if Hillary Clinton wins because a Clinton victory would be a self-evident truth of a “rigged” outcome. It would be an understatement to say that this does not bode well for the proper functioning of the American government.
Therefore, for all of the above reasons and more, I as an American (I also am a recent British citizen) am saddened and discouraged by the prospect of an election outcome of Clinton winning the White House but the Republicans holding onto to their current control of the United States Senate. It will result in unprecedented legislative gridlock, fevered partisan divisiveness, burning animosity and governmental stalemate. If this were to occur, I fear for the fate of not only America but the wider world as well.

Ned York, 8 November 2016