Lame ducks can still bite

A simple prediction about the next few months.

With the most likely outcome of tomorrow’s election being a democratic win of the House and republicans retaining the Senate, it’s dangerous to assume that nothing of interest will happen before the next Congress is sworn in. The GOP will still control Congress for two months, and it’s useful to anticipate what they might try.

To do that, imagine the world from the viewpoint of the GOP. What does an upcoming divided Congress mean to you? It means that while you’ve lost the unilateral power to pass new laws, you still have an absolute veto on any new laws you don’t like. You can’t push things through, but you can stop them. The same is true for the democrats, which means that little change can happen without painful negotiations with the other side. We’ll be lucky just to have the government stay open. And we haven’t been very lucky lately.

Facing that scenario, but with two months remaining of complete control of Congress, what does the GOP do? Do they say “well, we lost, so we’ll just wait for the new congress and see how it goes?” Hell no, they say “We’ve got two months to pass every piece of legislation we can,” all with the expectation that the new democratic House will find it impossible to undo what had been done.

So expect the next few weeks to be full of every hare-brained, poorly drafted, lobbyist and think-tank written, GOP-donor wishlist item getting run through the legislative process to get to the President’s desk before time runs out.

The goals will be threefold. First, pass things that are on the top of the wish list. Tax cuts. Defense spending. Regulatory repeal. A right-to-life bill for the base. Maybe a few bricks for the wall too. Second, pass as many things that can be used as bargaining chips with the incoming democratic House leadership. Give entitlements a haircut. Cut civil rights. Not just once or in one place, but as many different ways as possible to hold them hostage. You want them back, speaker Pelosi? Then you have to play ball. Third, pass any laws possible that will help republicans in future elections. Try to blunt the House’s investigative powers. Gimmick the electoral process. Inoculate Trump. Maybe even try to legalize some forms of gerrymandering.

With so little time left and so much stuff that needs to be done, there will be a lack of concern about how. We’ve seen how the rules of the Senate have been changed when they’re inconvenient; expect nothing less in the next few weeks. When the democrats lay down on the tracks to try to stop the GOP train, the train will quickly run over them.

The anger in DC will be palpable. The name-calling will be intense. What little comity existed will be incinerated in a final blaze. And then, in January, a bitterness will settle in that will remind some of the cold-war era Berlin. But the republicans will have a roster of hostages to trade.

There’s innumerable ways I could be wrong. But I’m willing to make my predictions in public and take that risk.