By Jim Geraghty
Friday, October 16, 2026
Don’t get me wrong; you’d rather face the problems of
being in the congressional majority than keep dealing with the problems of
being in the minority.
But if you’re a Democrat, you should savor these days and
the likely big wins on Election Night. Because once you’re the majority, after
a few days of celebrating, life gets harder. As one House Republican staffer
put it to me after losing the majority decades ago, “Now we’re throwing the
grenades, instead of catching them.”
I’ll have more to say on this topic on a forthcoming
article in the print edition of National Review. But if Democrats win a
majority in the U.S. House of Representatives or Senate, they “win” the fun of
trying to get anything passed with an angry, frustrated, vindictive President
Trump at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
And the threshold for a lasting Democratic Senate
majority may well be 52 seats. If, after the midterms, the Senate has 51
Democrats and 49 Republicans, there will be intense discussions about
Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman switching parties. If Fetterman did switch
parties or vote to keep Thune as majority leader, it would turn it into a 50-50
split where Vice President JD Vance would break the tie, preserving the
Republican majority.
Fetterman has repeatedly said he has no intention of
switching parties; he only votes with the GOP’s position about a quarter of the time. (In the most recent 40 votes, he’s voted with the Democrats 90
percent of the time.) Nonetheless, Trump is talking up the possibility of Fetterman flipping to the Republicans, and it seems likely
that no matter what happens in the next two years, Fetterman is either A) not
running for reelection in 2028, or B) not running for reelection as a Democrat
in 2028.
A little-noticed story from last month:
Sen. John
Fetterman (D-PA) attended an exclusive retreat with executives from Fox News,
traveling to Montana in July at the invitation of the network’s owners.
The event, hosted
at the Murdoch family ranch the weekend of July 11, featured a panel on social
media that Fetterman headlined with Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL), one of his closest
GOP colleagues in the Senate. Three sources and Fetterman himself confirmed his
attendance at the retreat.
When you’re hanging out at Rupert
Murdoch’s ranch, you are not that interested in staying on warm and fuzzy
terms with Democrats in Pennsylvania or anywhere else. And Republicans will
likely offer everything up to renaming his home state “Fettermania” to entice
him to switch sides.
Even with a Senate majority, Democrats would need 60
votes to get most legislation passed. Democrats might talk about nuking the
filibuster, but Fetterman says he’s opposed to that. Assuming every other Democrat
agrees to get rid of it, there is an enormous difference between Democrats
winning 51 seats in the Senate this fall and winning 52 seats.
That also assumes every Democratic senator . . . er,
sticks around. Vermont’s Bernie Sanders just turned 85. Maine’s “independent”
who caucuses with the Democrats, Angus King, is 82. Connecticut’s Richard
Blumenthal and Massachusetts’s Ed Markey are 80, Vermont’s Peter Welch is 79
(in his state, he’s the young one!), and Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono will turn
79 on Election Day. Rounding out the top ten oldest Democratic senators is
Massachusetts’s Elizabeth Warren (77), Oregon’s Ron Wyden (77), Rhode Island’s
Jack Reed (77 next month), and New York’s Chuck Schumer (76 next month).
Everybody got their flu shots, right? It’s not surprising
to see so many Democratic senators opposed to burning fossil fuels . . .
because they’re so close to becoming it.
Almost all those states have Democratic governors or are
likely to have Democratic governors after the midterms, so an unscheduled
departure from Congress would not see them replaced by a Republican. (Note that
Vermont has a Republican governor, Phil Scott, who has a good chance of winning reelection in November. But in the
past, Scott has said he would abide by Vermont’s tradition of naming a replacement from the same party as the outgoing
officeholder.) But if there’s a 52–48 Democratic majority, any absence
creates even less margin for error on a party-line vote.
And this is just focusing on the Senate. We’ll see what
the split in the House of Representatives is, but Republicans currently enjoy a
219 (Yes, I know Kevin Kiley is calling himself an independent these days) to
214 majority with two vacancies — one in a GOP-leaning seat in Texas, the other
in a Democratic-leaning seat in Florida.
Maybe the Democrats will win a solid majority; DecisionDeskHQ
is currently projecting Democrats win 235 seats and Republicans win 200.
But if it’s closer, a narrow House margin means vacancies, absences, and
special elections matter a lot.
Speaking of absences, the 2028 presidential race will
begin roughly 20 minutes after the polls close on Election Day. I exaggerate
slightly, but last cycle, Trump announced his presidential campaign one week after the midterm election, before the runoff in
Georgia was complete. One way to stand out in a crowded field is to be the
first candidate to announce his or her campaign.
In the House, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of
New York and Ro Khanna of California are likely to run for president in 2028.
In the Senate, we are likely to see presidential
campaigns from New Jersey’s Cory Booker, Arizona’s Ruben Gallego, Arizona’s
Mark Kelly, Connecticut’s Chris Murphy, Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen, Georgia’s
Raphael Warnock, and Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin. (For what it’s worth, Georgia’s
Jon Ossoff says he’s not running.) Don’t tell me these figures have no
chance of winning the nomination; no power on earth is stronger than the
delusion of a senator who looks in a mirror and sees a president staring back
at him.
That’s seven senators who will be looking for
opportunities to jet off to South Carolina, Nevada, or New Hampshire, who will
be introducing their symbolic bills, and generally elbowing their way into the
spotlight. And there’s a good chance that most of these senators will try to
outflank their rivals by proposing ideas that are further and further to the
left.
Then there’s the gap between the big dreams and vast
ambitions of the Democratic Socialists of America candidates and the
progressive grassroots, and what can realistically be accomplished with a
Republican in the White House. And a certain prominent Democrat is not helping matters by
talking up the sweeping changes Democrats should be able to enact if they
control Congress.
“The work that we can do about winning back the House and
the Senate is going to be on a number of things. For example, I believe that we
need to expand the Supreme Court. We need more justices on the Supreme Court so
that we can have a court that actually reinforces the spirit and principles
behind the Constitution of the United States.”
Yes, that is former Vice President Kamala Harris.
In theory, all it takes to expand the Supreme Court is
for the House and Senate to pass legislation making the change. Under Article I of the
U.S. Constitution and the Necessary and Proper Clause, Congress has the direct power to set and alter the number of
justices on the Supreme Court. Of course, that assumes the legislation would
not be vetoed by Donald Trump. And who would be appointing those justices until
January 20, 2029? Trump, even if a Democratic-controlled Senate is just about
certain to reject any of his nominees.
Passing this would mean that the next time Republicans
have control of the House, the Senate, and the presidency, they would just
expand the number of justices on the court to an even larger number to ensure a
majority of their preferred justices.
Schumer and Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem
Jeffries spent much of the past two years being hated by the grassroots because
they supposedly weren’t effective enough at fighting Trump. A Democratic
congressional majority will have some leverage through the budget,
appropriations, debt limit, and confirmation process, but Trump will continue
to be Trump for the next two years, consistently finding new ways to outrage,
antagonize, and immiserate progressive Democratic voters. The best night of a
new Democratic congressional majority may well be Election Night.
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