As I write this week’s blog, Joe Biden is being referred to as the president-elect. President Trump’s team is trying to prove that there were enough voting irregularities in key states, like Pennsylvania and Nevada and Arizona, to give Trump a chance of retaining the presidency. Every legal vote should be counted, and none of the illegal ones. Of course there are differences of opinion as to which ones are legal and which are not, and the courts will likely make the call.
But one thing is for sure. Democrats’ boasting about a vast Blue Wave coming, that would give them the Senate, and add to their numbers in the House, were dashed on the shores of reality last week. Not only did they fail to take the Senate, but they lost seats in the House. Yes, the Democrats will still be in the majority in the House, but rather than pick up 10 to 20 seats, it looks like they will have lost about 10 seats by the time all the votes are counted.
Right now it’s uncertain exactly how many seats in the House will be in Republican hands, and how many in Democratic hands, because some of the races are still too close to call, particularly in California, where the results of “vote harvesting” often leads to seats that look like they were going to be Republican, slipping away as “harvested” votes continue to be counted for weeks and weeks after the election. Two years ago, there were half a dozen or so that looked like they were going to go Republican, that all went Democrat by the end of the process.
That being said, at this point it looks like Republicans are going to pick up about 10 seats in the House. This means that Nancy Pelosi, who was able to rule the House with an iron fist over the last two years, will have a harder time doing so over the next two.
Here’s another thing to consider. Assuming that Trump’s challenges to Biden‘s win are not successful, and Biden becomes the 46th President, the Congressional election of 2022 should be very favorable for Republicans. Whenever one party wins the Presidency, the other party almost always does well in the next election cycle.
Why is this? Principally because we’re never really satisfied with our leaders. Being president is a tough job, thankless really, and the opposite party from the president usually has a good year next time around. One caveat – Biden is likely to get much more favorable press coverage than Trump did, or either Bush or Reagan did for that matter. So maybe there won’t be quite the Republican boost in 2022 as one would expect. Time will tell.
Dems and their friends in the mainstream media had also predicted with glee that Republicans would lose the Senate this year. It doesn’t look like that will happen either. We can’t say for sure yet, because one Senate seat in Alaska is still being counted, and the two Senate seats in Georgia will be decided in a runoff election in December since no candidate received the required 50% of the vote. I expect Republicans to win the Alaska seat and both of the Georgia seats, but a lot of money is going to be spent, on both sides, in an effort to affect that outcome.
The bottom line is, even if we have to start saying “President” Biden on January 20, Republicans are likely to be able to stop the lurch to the left that would have occurred had the Democrats won the trifecta – the Presidency, the House and the Senate last week. Biden will be able to do a lot of lefty stuff by issuing executive orders – as President Trump did in the opposite direction – but as for passing lefty legislation, that’s unlikely to happen.
So on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being leftism and socialism and evilness, and 10 being freedom and conservatism and goodness, America is about at a 3.5 as a result of this election, in my humble opinion.