Ask A Genius 736: Democrats Control the Presidency
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2022/04/07
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: Right now in America obviously, the Democrats control the presidency and barely the House and by an even thinner margin the Senate and something like more than 80% of the time the party who has the presidency loses seats in the House and often in the Senate. So what you see on Twitter all the time is we have to work really hard and get out there and vote so that doesn’t happen. Nobody’s talking about when it’s going to happen but I think it’ll be almost impossible for Democrats to keep control of the House because I think their margin is seven seats and the average number of seats lost by the party with the presidency is probably upwards of 20. This time around there aren’t any special circumstances that would help the Democrats avoid that. The Democrats took power in 2020 because Trump was the shittiest president in history and we had the worst pandemic in a century and those are very special circumstances.
The Republicans continue to grow more loathsome. The Republican leadership is the worst major political party in U.S history; just super racist, a significant chunk of Republicans in the house still kind of support Russia which is just insane. They’re just super evil, it’s bad but it isn’t losing them support. The Democrats keep thinking that the obvious loathsomeness of the Republican is in power will get people to not vote on the Republican side and to show up to vote on the Democratic side but I don’t think that there’s a lot of evidence of that. That alone is not special enough to save the Democrats.
There’s also a hope that Trump will get indicted or the people around Trump will be indicted in time for the midterms and there’s little evidence that the people in charge of investigating Trump and Trump is being investigated by like seven different organizations; The Department of Justice, the New York State Attorney General, whatever legal structure is in charge of law in New York City and four other sets of lawyers but there’s no evidence that anybody will pull the trigger and indict him of soon enough to do any good and even if indicted whether that would do any good. His rallies draw fewer and fewer people but he doesn’t need people to show up at his rallies for people to continue to vote for republicans. So the silver lining of trump as president was that he was so bad at everything that he missed out on a lot of opportunities to do further evil shit just because he’s a moron and politically inexperienced.
So I think it’s possible that if the Republicans take back of the House and the Senate, the only thing stopping them from doing shit on a national level is Biden vetoing stuff. I mean that’s sufficient to override a veto you need two two-thirds majority and nobody will have that; the Republicans won’t have that. So, we’re looking at a two-year stalemate probably and who knows what the fuck will happen if the Supreme Court loses another Justice in between 2023 and the beginning of 2025, probably Mitch McConnell just stonewall the entire time. We just got one of the most qualified justices confirmed.
Sandra Day O’Connor, 30 years ago was the first woman put on the Supreme Court and she’s a Republican nominated by the first Bush and she was confirmed 99-0 because there was a sense of decency in the Senate. The new woman named Ketanji Brown Jackson; highly qualified, really nothing controversial about her was confirmed 53-47. With all the votes against just being Republicans who are just like fuck you, there’s no comedy anymore. So there’s no reason to think the Republicans if they control the Senate would let another Justice be nominated and confirmed by Biden. And if the Republicans take back more State Houses, they’ll continue to pass crazy laws. Oklahoma earlier this week passed a law making abortion entirely illegal in the state of Oklahoma. Texas is looking at legislation to make abortion punishable by death. There’s just a lot of indication that after the midterm elections in November things are going to get worse. With the only thing holding the Republicans back being Biden being president and it’s super questionable whether Biden can get re-elected because in 2024 I think he’ll be 82 and his popularity right now is in the 41% and I think the vice president’s popularity is even less than that. She’s black and Asian and half of the country is increasingly unapologetically racist. It’s become increasingly clear that the Republicans have been a changing vote totals for national elections for most of the 21st century and the only good news about that is that it might be a little less this time around because there’s more scrutiny of Russia which was helping with that shit. A little of it’s been shut down on social media but I don’t think it’s been shut down in terms of people fucking with the mechanics of voting. So, few people on Twitter are out and out panicking. Everybody’s still saying if about the bad shit that could happen.
[Recording End]
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