What will the next Congress look like? The folks at 538 lean left in their commentary, but they are good at sticking to what their numbers and models say whether they like it or not. At this time two years ago they were calling the presidential race close when many observers thought Mrs. Clinton had it in the bag and she was all but measuring the drapes in the White House. See this post.
As of this writing, the Silver crew rates the Democrats' chances of taking the House at 4 to 1, while the Republicans' chances of keeping the Senate are 2 to 1. Thus the most likely result, by a fairly heavy margin, is a divided Congress. (The linked pages are regularly updated. They might say something different if you are reading this later.)
What does such a division portend?
There was a time when divided control wouldn't have been so bad. When people could and would work together, the legislative leaders would get together and pass something down the middle. In today's hyperpolarized environment, that idea seems quaint.
House committees will be doing wall-to-wall investigations. An impeachment resolution is a dead-flat certainty, and acquittal by the Senate is equally certain. We've seen this movie before. Sequels to good movies are rarely as good, and sequels to bad movies are uniformly awful. This will fall in the latter category.
Chances of passing significant legislation will drop to near zero in many areas. What do we do with Obamacare? Repeal it? Replace it? Fix it? Not the proverbial snowball's chance of any of those. Taxes? Fuggitaboudit.
Government shutdowns are a possibility. The House might refuse to pass any spending bill that does not contain some of its leaders' pet priorities, confident that the press will blame any shutdown on the Republicans regardless of actual fault.
How about criminal justice? I have little hope that anything positive could pass the Democrat-controlled House. There is ground to fear that something ill-conceived might pass the Republican-controlled Senate. After all, the present Republican-controlled House passed the ill-conceived, poorly written, misrepresented Faux Pas Act (mislabeled First Step Act), as noted in this post. We will need to do a better job in educating Senators how they are being snowed.
The bright side is that a Republican-controlled Senate can continue confirming judges, and hopefully the White House will continue to nominate good ones after the departure of Don McGahn. See this post.
Not the brightest outlook for the next two years, but it could be a lot worse.
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