‘Blue wave’​ not as big as Democrats anticipated

Democrat House gains are mirrored by Senate losses

Michael Negrete, Times Staff

 

Since Donald Trump took office two years ago, all that many of the country’s citizens that voted against him have had to look forward to is the midterm elections that were just held.

Many individuals to the left of the political aisle saw the midterms as an opportunity to begin checking President Trump on his many actions that many pundits consider to be unconstitutional.

For the extreme critics of the president – people like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and even fellow Republicans like Jeff Flake and John Kasich, saw the midterms as a potential opportunity to begin to flirt with the idea of impeachment.

Since the Democrats took control of the House, the impeachment of President Trump is more likely now than it has ever been at any other point in his presidency.

However, a common misconception that many Americans have is that the impeachment of a president equates to his or her removal from office; impeachment is simply the process to put an official on trial to be removed from office.

So, even if Trump were to be impeached, the probability of him actually being removed from office remains low, as the Senate, which Republicans held onto, would be the chamber actually voting on the removal from office of Trump should he be impeached by the House.

For example, two presidents in our nation’s history have previously been impeached — Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.

However, the Senate acquitted both presidents of their charges, therefore, neither one of them was removed from office.

Despite taking control of the House of Representatives, many prominent media pundits consider the success of the Democrats in the midterms to be at best minimal; some even consider the midterms to be a failure since they did not take control of both chambers of Congress.

Beyond the inability to remove President Trump from office, the failure the Democrats experienced in the Senate races in this election could have devastating consequences for policy they wish to pass.

It may now be more difficult to ‘resist’ the president now after the midterms than it was before because of the fact that Democrats actually lost seats in the Senate. It’ll now be easier for the president to have any potential Supreme Court nominees confirmed; the Democrats have less votes in the Senate now than they did during the confirmation hearings of then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Neither party should feel great about the results of the election. While the Democrats won big in the House, they lost in the Senate.

President Trump will most certainly face the most resistance from his counterparts in D.C. now with a Democratic-lead House, but the fight is far from over for the left as they begin to push back on the Trump Administration and look to 2020.