The Democratic Party has won a majority in the US Senate and will retain control of the House for the next two years, in a major victory for President Joe Biden’s party – who will retain some governability even if he loses a majority in the House,
The majority was confirmed this Saturday (12) with the re-election of Senator Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada against Trumpist lawyer Adam Laxalt, according to a projection by the American channel CNN. Now, the party will have at least 50 senators, the same number it has today, half the seats in the House, and it wins a majority with the tie-breaking votes that, according to American rules, go to the country’s vice president, Kamala Harris.
But Democrats could win yet another seat in the House if Raphael Warnock, the current Georgia senator, is re-elected in December. That’s because Georgia has a second round if the candidates don’t reach 50% of the votes, which happened in this week’s race. Now, the decision will be for December 6th. If they win there, the Democrats will have 51 seats, a better situation than they have today. This will give more breath to the legend because, with 50 seats, exactly the minimum necessary, any dissent from the base can stop the president’s projects, as happened a number of times with Biden, when, for example, the Inflation Reduction Law was stopped for months by Democratic Senator Joe Manchin’s disagreements.
The election of Cortez Masto confirms the Democratic Party’s far superior performance than the polls had expected. There was talk of a “red wave” that would overwhelmingly elect Republican congressmen, amid the wear and tear of the Democratic administration, with low popularity, which did not happen. Republicans are still struggling to confirm that they will have control of the House and now they have just lost the Senate, contrary to what polls showed on the eve of the election.
It also confirms former President Donald Trump as one of the great losers of these midterms. That’s because the race for control of the Senate would be decided in four states: Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, all of them with staunch Republican Trumpist candidates.
But so far Trump has lost three of those elections, generating huge internal dissatisfaction.
The first was in Pennsylvania, where its candidate, doctor and TV presenter Mehmet Oz, lost the Senate election to Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman — this was the most important victory of the race because that’s when the Democrats flipped a seat. which is now republican. Trump’s second defeat took place on Friday night (11), in Arizona, where Blake Masters lost to astronaut and current senator Mark Kelly.
Now, also loses Adam Laxalt, former attorney general of Nevada, who repeated false claims that there was fraud in the election that Joe Biden won from Trump in 2020.
Although he was defeated, Laxalt proved to be a competitive candidate, however, and should lose by just a few thousand votes when the polls close.
Republicans have blamed Trump for boosting weak, radical party names with no political experience, which has turned more moderate voters away. The poor performance has reorganized the correlation of forces within the Republican Party and even threatens a new candidacy of the former president, which should be announced next week.
Without the House, but with control of the Senate, Biden will be in the same situation as Trump from 2018, which is useful to avoid a loss of office in a possible serious political crisis – as happened with Trump, who had two impeachments approved. in the House, but barred in the Senate.
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