"The President's party loses seats in the midterms" is a long-term trend and it seems pretty likely to hold this time.

The real question is, once the Democrats are back in control of at least one house of Congress, are they going to be sane or are they going to spend two years making such fools of themselves that we end up with another Republican President in 2028?

Alas you'll need to define "sane" first. That might be harder than expected.

Equally unfortunate is the need for 60 senate votes to actually have a meaningful say over what the president does. And in truth no part has had "control" of congress to this level for a while.

When one (or indeed both) sides are politically incapable of being bipartisan (witness the outcomes for those voting against party lines, on both sides) control of one house is meaningless and a majority in the senate (short of 60 votes) mostly meaningless.

Expecting any change in behavior after November, regardless of the results, is wishful thinking.

It takes 40 votes to prevent the other party from putting something in a bill that you're willing to do a government shutdown to prevent. That's probably a good thing. Consider what would be happening right now, when the Republicans have >50 but not >60, if that meant they could actually do whatever they want.

And the difference between 49 and 51 is still pretty damn important because "majority" has a lot of procedural consequences that are not irrelevant.

As you've seen, over, and over, and over again, this is their own internal rule they've changed it before and they can just change it again with a simple majority, the so-called "nuclear option".

None of this has any actual weight, it's all theatre. Which doesn't mean it lacks consequences, but they could at any time just sweep it aside and they choose not to.

Ironically, one thing the Senate does constitutionally need a super-majority for and can't just change the rule is Impeaching the President. Which means that so long as Republicans have enough votes and apparently still believe loyalty to one corrupt rotting bag of shit is their purpose in life he can't be impeached.

> As you've seen, over, and over, and over again, this is their own internal rule they've changed it before and they can just change it again with a simple majority, the so-called "nuclear option".

It's called the "nuclear option" because actually using it is mutually-assured destruction. They're not so stupid that they can't foresee ever being in the minority again when changing a rule where that consideration is the blatantly obvious cost.

Somehow the Democrats were that stupid and did it for judicial nominations and both parties can see how that came back to bite them.

> Which means that so long as Republicans have enough votes and apparently still believe loyalty to one corrupt rotting bag of shit is their purpose in life he can't be impeached.

The real purpose of impeachment is for when there is widespread consensus that someone so pressingly needs to be removed from office that it can't wait until the next election. It's for when they're so bad even their own side won't stand for it, not for when you hate the other party's President and catch a slight majority in the midterms.

But if you retake the legislature then maybe consider adding some new restraints on executive power to those hefty must-pass omnibus bills. It might be worth doing something about the problem in general instead of just that one specific jerk?

I think it's very telling that your understanding of the present situation is "you hate the other party's President".

The thing I find irritating is that the government has been doing things as bad the things Trump is doing for decades, and those things are actually bad and shouldn't be done, but people are now acting like Trump invented them.

Don't get offended that Trump is more brazen about anything than anyone else and try to retaliate against him in particular, instead change the things that need to be changed so that nobody can do those things anymore, even when they're acting like they're not.

Yes I think some of what he's doing isn't new, and yes some of it isn't new, just more brazen, but I think there's also a lot of new.

For example, pardons are for sale. Thats pretty obvious. maybe it's been done before (?) but certainly not on this scale and not so soon in the term.

Secondly he's set up a direct method for paying him, TrumpCoin. That's different to campaign contributions. And indeed quite a bit of trumpcoin is being sold to foreign govts. I'm gonna put that in the "new" column.

In terms of international relations it's all new. He's blowing up trust in the US, via tarrifs, threats to invade a NATO country and so on. This is long term damage at unprecedented scale for no apparent actual gain.

There are plenty of laws which say he can't do any of this. Adding more laws is not the solution. A weak congress, and a weak Supreme Court unwilling to enforce the laws is the problem.

> For example, pardons are for sale.

This seems like a pretty good example of how Trump is "different" but not actually different.

The traditional way this works is through prosecutorial discretion. You make friends with the politician and then when they're in office you don't get prosecuted or the case gets dropped or settled under favorable terms. Example: When Bush got elected, the antitrust case against Microsoft was effectively made to go away "for some reason" (https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/microsoft-political-...).

Doing the same thing with pardons is way more conspicuous, because instead of something that doesn't happen (prosecution) you have something that does happen, and in public view (official pardon).

Politicians traditionally care about distinctions like that because it makes it much easier to accuse them of the thing, whereas Trump DGAF. But it's fundamentally not a different thing and the actual problem isn't that Trump isn't being subtle about it, it's that they should not be getting away with it even when they are being subtle about it.

> Secondly he's set up a direct method for paying him, TrumpCoin. That's different to campaign contributions.

Eh. It's not that much different to campaign contributions and it's not really different at all to the longstanding practice of politicians or their family members owning a private company which then gets into a bunch of peculiarly advantageous business dealings while they're in office.

> In terms of international relations it's all new. He's blowing up trust in the US, via tarrifs, threats to invade a NATO country and so on. This is long term damage at unprecedented scale for no apparent actual gain.

The problem with this one is it's the hating the other party's President one. Congress passed a law letting the President set tariffs, didn't repeal it for many years, and then the President started setting some tariffs. You can argue that it's a bad policy, you can argue that they should repeal the law that lets him do it, but he ran for office saying he was going to do this, got into office, and now he's doing it.

> There are plenty of laws which say he can't do any of this. Adding more laws is not the solution. A weak congress, and a weak Supreme Court unwilling to enforce the laws is the problem.

There are two kinds of laws in this context.

The first is the ones that punish him for doing something. Those are useless in this context because the executive isn't going to prosecute itself so you're down to impeachment and for that you need bipartisan consensus.

The second is the ones that prevent him from doing something. Take away the law that lets the President set tariffs and he can't unilaterally set any tariffs.

>once the Democrats are back in control of at least one house of Congress

"Are the democrats magically going to be able to have 100% control of the government despite only holding a tiny majority in the lower house? If not, I'm going to yet again blame them for a failure that is actually just the constitution working as it clearly states"

The US system is not designed to give democrats any power by holding a small majority in a single house. The power granted in such a case is the power to prevent change.

FDR was able to reform and change things the way he was because Democrats had something like 80% control of both houses, and that's how the threat to pack the Supreme court carried weight: Because he could actually do it.

You want democrats to have power? You want them to be able to put these criminals in jail? You want to be able to reform the system to reduce the chance of this horseshit happening again?

Then you need far more than a small majority in one house. You need actual control.

It's much easier to obstruct and prevent and destroy, so Republican policy of tearing shit down and stopping normal legislative progress and ensuring our congress passes no laws to deal with obvious bullshit like rampant corporate fraud that would make Enron blush is just naturally advantaged.

> Are the democrats magically going to be able to have 100% control of the government despite only holding a tiny majority in the lower house?

They're not supposed to have 100% control of the government. Nobody is. They're supposed to prevent the Republicans from doing dumb stuff, just like the Republicans are supposed to prevent them from doing different dumb stuff because they have different constituencies. Only when they can both agree is when the government should be doing something, and even then you often need help from the courts and the states because the thing they both agree on is that someone is paying them to do something bad.

The best government is the one that does exactly what it should. The second best is the one that doesn't do things that it should; in that case someone else can do them, like the states or the market. The worst is the one that does things that it shouldn't.

> FDR was able to reform and change things the way he was because Democrats had something like 80% control of both houses

FDR was pre-Nixon and had 80% control by sweeping the South and losing New England. People forget that the original purpose of the minimum wage was to prevent black people from taking jobs from white people by offering to work for less money. Most of FDR's policies were economically illiterate or political knavery -- social security was created with the solvency of a pyramid scheme which is why the trust fund already has a negative growth rate and is soon going to run out of money now that population growth has leveled off.

That kind of authoritarian steamrolling over the opposition is exactly what nobody should be able to do, not least because it most often happens when people are heated about something and willing to start hastily implementing half-baked ideas with long-term consequences if given the chance.

> It's much easier to obstruct and prevent and destroy

If only! A major defect in the existing system is that the high bar meant to keep bad laws from making onto the books to begin with is also applied as the requirement to repeal them. Combined with the tendency for the powerful to defend the status quo that secured them that power, the result is that bad laws accumulate and how to be effective in destroying them is an unsolved problem.

"The mistake has proceeded from not attending with due care to the mischiefs that may be occasioned by obstructing the progress of government at certain critical seasons. When the concurrence of a large number is required by the Constitution to the doing of any national act, we are apt to rest satisfied that all is safe, because nothing improper will be likely TO BE DONE, but we forget how much good may be prevented, and how much ill may be produced, by the power of hindering the doing what may be necessary, and of keeping affairs in the same unfavorable posture in which they may happen to stand at particular periods."