The Real Choice in 2024:

Gridlock (Domestic) vs. Chaos

My wife often calls me “eeyore” for being too pessimistic, but at the time same always advises both of us to be realistic about virtually everything, and not to put one’s head into the sand. And so, it is in the spirit of realism (sorry, my fellow Democrats, who may still be basking in the euphoria of the remarkable Democratic convention) that I boil down what I see as the two most likely alternative outcomes of the 2024 elections.

               Both rest on the observation that the outcome of the race for the control of both Congressional chambers matters a whole lot, more so for Harris than Trump. I will explain in due course.

               Let’s begin with what a Harris win would look like. Even the most optimistic projections of her winning margins, by the popular or electoral vote, are unlikely to change one stubborn highly likely outcome: Republicans are overwhelmingly likely to take back control of the Senate, making it pretty much irrelevant to an incoming Harris administration what happens to control of the House (which at this point the Democrats have a good chance to retake).  

               Currently, the Senate is split 51-49 in favor of Democrats, counting the 3 independent Senators who caucus with the Democrats. There are a total of 34 Senate seats on the 2024 ballot, 23 currently held by Democrats, and just 11 held by Republicans. According to the Cook Political Report, about as reliable a source as exists on political projections, Rs are sure win 9 of theirs, and likely winners of the other two (Scott in Florida and Cruz in Texas). Meanwhile, Ds are sure to lose one of theirs (West Virginia), and currently face toss-ups in three (Michigan, Montana and Ohio). https://www.cookpolitical.com/ratings/senate-race-ratings.

               In other words, given their sure loss of one in West Virginia, the only way Ds control the Senate after 2024, is if they run the table on the three toss-ups and if they win the Presidency and if all their candidates now leading, but not sure things, also win their races. That’s a tall order since Cook’s toss-up rating for Montana, where Senator Tester faces stiff headwinds is generous: Tester D-Montana) is running behind, rather substantially, in all but one August poll. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/senate/2024/montana/.

               Bottom line: A Harris win is more than likely to be accompanied by a Republican takeover of the Senate. Which slams the door shut on every one of her ambitious legislative proposals. Without Democratics control of the Senate, an incoming Harris administration would find it a dauting task even to get appointees in important jobs confirmed without stiff fights and all compromises unpalatable to the Administration, let alone getting judicial appointees approved.

               So, forget all the Trump warnings about Democratic spending plans, deficits, and so on. Highly likely not going to happen, at least for the first two years of a Harris administration. Gridlock folks. By one or two votes, most likely in the Senate, Harris would begin her presidency on much less favorable terms than Biden began his.

               Could this change in the last two years of a first Harris term? In the Senate, the tables will be turned for the 2026 elections. As of mid-2023, only 13 of the 33 seats up for grabs then would be held by Ds, 20 by Rs. https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Senate_elections,_2026. So, depending on a whole bunch of things – two years away is an awfully long time – Ds theoretically could flip control of the Senate back in 2026. But then for any Harris agenda, however ambitious, to pass Congress after the 2026 mid-terms, Ds would have to avoid losing ground in the House (if Ds retake the House in 2024) or somehow gaining control of the House in 2026 if they don’t manage that feat in 2024. The odds of either happening are not good, given the historical pattern of mid-term elections favoring the party not in control of the White House.

               Of course, none of this will stop Congressional Democrats, or a Harris administration, in the first two years from constantly pushing their agenda, even if won’t pass. In the current political environment, where Harris is still an untested candidate, this is not a sure winner with independents and swing voters. But that could change, in Democrats’ favor, in two years, if the economy continues growing and inflation abating. By then, more voters will know a President Harris, and are more likely to trust her and fellow Democrats to enact their agenda in the last two years of Harris’ first term. Of course, if the economy stumbles, then so would Democrats’ electoral chances in the 2026 mid-terms.

               Could a Harris presidency still do things domestically without Congressional approval by executive order or regulatory change? The Biden administration has tried both, and it is far from clear how much more a Harris administration could do. If anything, very likely less, given recent rulings of the Supreme Court and lower courts in its wake, taking away deference given to agency rulemakings and exercises of Presidential power (at least when a Democrat is President).

               Given all this, the fate of a Harris presidency, and its ability to get anything done on the domestic front -- will depend heavily on her first one or several meetings with whoever becomes Senate Majority Leader: will it be someone in the mold of Mitch McConnell who would pledge to his caucus and to an incoming President Harris that Rs would fight against everything the Administration would do from day One, or will it be someone who would pledge to do limited business with Harris in the interest of addressing some of the country’s problems? The outcome of that choice may be largely determined by the closeness of the 2024 election and/or any chaos that follows it, and thus whether and to what extent Trumpism will have been diminished/vanquished or still will be pursued by the multiple candidates who will lay claim to inheriting the Trump mantle. And then even with a Republican Senate Leader willing to do the nation’s business, the value of any such promise will depend on whether Rs retain control of the House (in which case, “doing any business” is an unlikely outcome) or the House flips to Democratic control (which raises the odds of a “doing at least some business” scenario).

               If, and this is a really big if, Rs want to play ball, I can see a possibility of Congress putting the bipartisan-negotiated toughened border bill that Trump vetoed on the desk of a President Harris, with an outside chance of a universal background check on gun purchases. Even a “doing business” R leader would be unlikely, however, to agree to any major changes to the Trump tax cut, which expires in 2025; the best the Ds could do here is to get Rs to agree to extend it only for a few years. But Ds and Harris probably would have to be willing to play hardball, threatening a government shutdown and/or debt default crisis (the irresponsible hardball tactics made popular by Rs) to get even that.

               What if a vacancy were to show up on the Supreme Court with an R-controlled Senate? If in the first two years of her presidency, Harris would have to choose between nominating a centrist who might not even be confirmed (and would be opposed by many Democrats) or leaving the seat open and gambling for Democrats’ return to power in the Senate in 2026.

               If most of all of the above is correct, that means the most important part of a Harris presidency will be what does on foreign policy. Here, too, there is much she cannot control, because in our multi-polar world, the US has far less sway than it used to have. But from where I stand, a Harris presidency that won’t run away from international engagement – which at a high level is clear even if some of her stances on specific issues is not -- is a lot less dangerous than the isolationist impulses of both Trump and Vance. One possible area of agreement with Rs, even if they are otherwise intransigent, is on a fundamental reorientation of our national defense spending, in the manner recently outlined by former Joint Chief of Staff General Milley and Eric Schmidt: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/ai-america-ready-wars-future-ukraine-israel-mark-milley-eric-schmidt. In brief, Milley and Schmidt make a powerful case, based on how fast cheap drone-based and AI-based warfare has threatened to obsolesce much traditional military hardware in Ukraine, that the US needs a major rethink, and quickly, about how to adapt our military to the extraordinary advances in technology, many of them driven by tech startups or young firms, not the traditional defense contractors like Lockheed Martin. The country will do well to pay head to their warnings and advice, especially in view of China’s looming threat to invade/blockade Taiwan by 2027 and China’s own technological advances in hypersonic missiles and AI. Maybe Rs and Ds can at least agree on a new technology-based path forward for our military in the interest of national security (if on nothing else).

***  

               Now, let’s turn to what a Trump win would look like. In a word: Chaos, especially so if Rs retain control of the House (and assuming, as above, Rs retake the Senate). Regardless of how specific or not Harris becomes about her domestic agenda – and it is almost certain to become more specific as the election approaches – there is little guesswork about what Trump intends to do, whether or not one believes his protestations that he won’t implement “Project 2025.” We all know from listening to Trump’s speeches or reading his tweets some of what he intends, this time without the guardrails of the adults in the room from his last Administration (few of whom now openly support him). To brush all of the following away as “bluster” would be like putting one’s heads in the proverbial sand, at our collective peril.

--Across the board tariffs of at least 10% if not higher; roundups of undocumented immigrants, starting with 1 million and likely to go much higher (the televised scenes of people being dragged out of homes by already stretched local police or the military/National Guard alone would be gut wrenching), renewal of the Trump tax cuts, and pressure on the Fed to say loose on monetary policy, and replacement of Jay Powell as chair when he his term is up in February 2026 (if Trump doesn’t try to oust him before then, a move Powell likely would contest, but who knows what courts would do?). If you believe the combination of these measures won’t increase the annual inflation rate by at least a percentage point, I have a bridge to sell you. Maybe much or most of the country wouldn’t care, but if they did, Trump could always take a page from the Harris campaign playbook and blame it all on all corporate greed (judging by his nomination acceptance speech, Vance no doubt would suggest this). I strongly suspect, however, the markets would care about increased inflation, and not in a good way: Wall Streat brokerage reports are already warning of inflationary impact of a Trump presidency: Also, a major uptick in inflation would prompt the Powell-led Fed to reverse course from the now promised monetary easing beginning in September, to tighten instead – a move that certainly draw Trump’s ire, and set up the chaotic duel over Powell’s chairmanship just previewed. Again, markets (Trump’s scorecard) would not approve.

--Trump has already vowed to have “his” Justice Department prosecute (for what?) a broad range of Democrats, including current President Biden, and Congressional leaders Schumer and Pelosi, and even threatening execution of General Milley. https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4542218-milley-response-trump-execution-comments-free-country/. All while pardoning those convicted for January 6^th-related crimes.  If any or all of this happens, the already deep fissures in the electorate will become chasms.

--More broadly, Trump has repeatedly vowed to gut the “deep state” and replace thousands, perhaps many more, career government workers, with workers totally loyal to him. Judging by Trump’s frequent dismissals of expertise, the Trump replacements on the whole would not be as qualified in their fields as those career public servants who would be let go. The country saw how well that kind of thing worked out, in just a “small way,” during Hurricane Katrina during the George W. Bush administration when a clearly unqualified individual was directing FEMA. Imagine replicating that many times over, not just at FEMA, but in important parts of the federal government protecting the health and safety of American citizens: at HHS, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the FAA and so on. The risk of chaos from an unqualified government work force confronting a wide range of possible future emergencies during a second Trump four year term is high on my list of things that should keep Americans up at night. Not counting the fact that gutting the federal work force would take years, if not decades to reverse. How many qualified people will want to have a career in public service knowing they could be dismissed on a political whim?  

--Abroad, if Trump means what he has been saying about Ukraine, then withdrawal of US military support for Ukraine will mean that Ukraine’s fate as a free country, and the ability of Ukrainians to avoid mass imprisonment and/or executions, would rest entirely in European hands. I know many Americans would be fine with that, let Europe step up to the plate. Maybe it would, but I do not believe it is in America’s interest to play Russian roulette to find out. Note also that many of the same Americans who want us to disengage from Ukraine’s valiant self-defense are also highly critical of Biden’s  chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, with Trump arguing that this sent a green light to Putin to invade Ukraine (ignoring the fact that Trump’s own obsession with being in Putin’s good graces, detailed in General H.R. McMaster’s forthcoming book about this subject, would have given a clearer green light to Putin had Trump been in office in 2022). By that some logic, an abandonment of Ukraine by the United States would send a clear signal to China that Trump would do little to protect Taiwan, an issue he already has dodged. https://apnews.com/article/trump-taiwan-chips-invasion-china-910e7a94b19248fc75e5d1ab6b0a34d8.

--I won’t speculate about what would happen under Trump in the Middle East, largely because so much could happen there between now and January 2025 that it is pointless now even to try to forecast what Trump would do. All I know is that the Palestinian Americans and many Democrats who are unhappy with the Biden administration’s support for Israel, but hard work trying to get to a cease-fore that releases any remaining hostages and a deal that doesn’t threaten Israel’s national security, almost surely will be even less happy with Trump in office.

--I could go on, but won’t, stopping with abortion, or more specifically, what Trump would do if a Republican-controlled sent a bill to him outlawing abortion (Senators would have to suspend the filibuster to do that, unless they attached an abortion ban to a reconciliation bill, which requires only a majority vote, and the Senate parliamentarian did not overrule such an attempt). Vance has recently proclaimed that Trump wouldn’t sign such a bill, despite Democratic warnings that he would. Vance could be right if Trump cares about elections, especially if he abides by the constitution and doesn’t run again in 2028. But Trump has already bragged that if we wins, the country won’t have to “vote again,” implying that he has something up his sleeve (declaration of some kind of emergency?) to carry that vow out.

. And remember, Vance has already urged a President Trump to ignore future Supreme Court opinions that Trump doesn’t like: “And when the courts — because you will get taken to court — and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’” https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/08/12/what-jd-vance-gets-wrong-about-the-supreme-court-00173445.   

All of this is to highlight the fact that Trump could and very likely would do all or almost all of the above without Rs controlling both Congressional chambers. Which is why I said at the outset that which party controls both houses is more important for a Harris than a Trump administration.

               All this sound crazy? Of course it is, but would you bet your farm (or house) that Trump and Vance don’t mean to do exactly what they say will they do? And surely not as crazy as gridlock, for at least the next two years.