Oh, another thing: it really makes me smile that Jerry Brown will be the governor of California again. Not just because he’s a Democrat, but also because I just love to see people achieve second acts late in life. Perhaps it’s my fear of death or my fear of getting old, but I really like the fact that a 72-year-old man can look forward to governing the largest state in the country for the next four years. It gives me the warm fuzzies.
Tag Archives: politics
Why the Dems Kept the Senate
Here’s why the Democrats kept the Senate tonight:
And to ensure that the Senate could protect the people against themselves, the Framers armored the Senate against the people. …
And around the Senate as a whole there would be an additional, even stronger, layer of armor. Elections for senators would be held every two years, but only for a third of the senators. The other two-thirds would not be required to submit their record to the voters (or, to be more accurate, to their legislatures) at that time. This last piece of armor made the Senate a “stable institution†indeed. As a chronicler of the Senate was to write almost two centuries after its creation: “It was so arranged that while the House of Representatives would be subject to total overturn every two years, and the Presidency every four, the Senate, as a Senate, could never be repudiated. It was fixed, through the staggered-term principle, so that only a third of the total membership would be up for re-election every two years. It is therefore literally not possible for the voters ever to get at anything approaching a majority of the members of the Institution at any one time.â€
— Robert Caro, Master of the Senate
If all 100 senators were up for election every two years, the Republicans would have romped tonight. But two-thirds of the Senate is immune to public repudiation in any particular election.
By the way, the link above takes you to the entire first chapter of Caro’s masterpiece. Essential reading if you want to understand the U.S. Senate.
Election Night, 12 Years Ago
I doubt there’ll be any election surprises tonight. But twelve years ago, in the 1998 midterm elections, at the height of the Lewinsky scandal and the House impeachment investigation, the Democrats overperformed:
Democrats roared back in the midterm elections yesterday, winning impressive victories in crucial Senate and gubernatorial races around the country despite months of dire predictions by Republicans and Democrats that President Clinton’s scandal would drag down his party’s candidates.
While Republicans maintained control of the Senate and the House of Representatives, the Democrats’ strong showing, in an off-year election when the party in the White House typically loses seats, made it far less likely that the Congress would move ahead aggressively with its impeachment inquiry of Mr. Clinton.
Yeah, we know how that last part turned out. Still, the Republicans thought they’d make some gains that night, but instead they lost five House seats and had a net gain of zero Senate seats. Several days later, Newt Gingrich stepped down as Speaker of the House.
It was a good night for Democrats; for instance, it was the night Chuck Schumer ousted Al D’Amato from his Senate seat.
Tonight won’t be quite as fun, but it’s nice to reminisce.