Averaging the best guess of Sam Wang--full-time neuroscientist and part-time wonder boy of polling predictions--Joe Biden "might end up with plenty of tie-breaking work to do" over the final two years of Obama's Senate, because Wang "would not be surprised to see a 49-51 split in one direction or the other."
I don't wish to seem indifferent about this midterm's Senate races, but even a Republican-controlled upper house doesn't particularly worry me. Such would be but superfluously degenerate. Republicans always have the lower house to screw up America, delay all progress, and in general make a laughingstock out of the world's oldest democracy. Thus President Obama's last two years will come down to one of only two possibilities: He'll spend that time vetoing every House-launched, loony-tune bill that passes through the Senate's bigger-brother Republican lunacy, or he'll sit and veto nothing--a Democratic Senate will plug the madness--because there will be nothing to veto.
Either way, it's another stalemate ... unless lightning should strike the electorate and awaken it to the realization that Republican majorities in either house are just another two-year ticket to gridlock and nothingness, which they'll otherwise bemoan, for two more years.
It's not the lack of progress that a GOP Senate would produce that is worrisome. It's the endless investigations of really important crises (#Bengazi!) coming to the Senate, and the likelihood of impeachment proceedings being handed up by the House.
Posted by: shsavage | May 28, 2014 at 04:36 PM
The Senate is also important for appointments, not least to the Supreme Court. Being blithe about that is silly.
Posted by: Jim Milstein | May 28, 2014 at 05:01 PM