Ok, great. So you voted. Now what, right? You go back to work for a while and wait for the mid-term election parties tonight? Are mid-term election parties a thing? I don’t think so. And besides, how is this thing really going to play out, anyway? Let’s look at it, there’s a few ways, on the national level, that this can go down.

Right now Republicans hold the presidency and both houses of Congress, and democrats are making a run at taking back at least one chamber. The contests are both pretty heated, and it could go one of three ways:

Neither Chamber of Congress Flips

This would be bad. When Donald Trump began to gain momentum in the republican primary a constituency of moderate republicans formed the “Never Trump” caucus of so-called reasonable republicans. This constituency shrank, but galvanized, during the general election, and even continued to putter along after we elected Donald Trump president.

However, the ideological red line that Trump seemed to cross on a daily basis turned out not to be a red line at all once his polling numbers among republicans never really suffered in the face of unapologetic lies, racist nationalism, and white supremacy. It turned out that the “Never Trump” movement was really just political hedging and the republican party of today has more or less embraced his white nationalist platform.

For us, as an electorate, not to reject that platform will serve as an embrace of that platform. For us to not flip at least one chamber of Congress will cement our country as one that celebrates an authoritarian, ultra-conservative government in pursuit of a white ethno-state. We’re talking, like, Eastern Bloc shit, you know?

Deflated, the political left (which is how we’re describing human rights now) will be further disillusioned, and extremists will probably conclude that the electoral process is broken, this nation is broken, and that a violent socialist rebellion is the only choice left. They will take to the hills with rifles where they will be killed pretty quickly in DHS drone strikes, and a small, impotent resistance will be hunted and killed by DHS,  ICE, and the (now) pro-government militias that have been busy for the last few years not paying for grazing leases, storming federal buildings, and serving as your local law enforcement.

This guerrilla street fighting will trigger more Patriot Act-style legislation to curtail civil rights and increase surveillance in the interest of homeland security, we’ll probably abolish presidential term limits, and then yeah, there you go, we’ve got Trump until we all die.

You’ve seen the Handmaid’s Tale. You get it. Let’s not do this.

The House Flips

Sure, it’s possible that the Senate will flip and the House won’t, but that’s kind of a long shot it seems like.

So if democrats retake the House, ho man, Trump would love that. Because here’s the two things that will happen:

1. President Trump’s legislative agenda will be done with for at least two years. This is a guy whose party controls the presidency and both chambers of Congress, and still complains that everyone is out to get him. If the House flips he will see actual obstruction, and that is basically emotional validation for a guy whose entire platform is to complain that everyone is wrong and only he can save us. He’s already got a legislative win in the tax cut bill, so all that’s left to do is sit back, spew white nationalist vitriol, and sign unconstitutional Executive Orders. This is basically retirement. He’s no longer even expected to get anything done.
2. There will be an effort to impeach him. There’s good reason to believe that Mueller is hot on his trail, and a fired up left-of-center House probably won’t need much prodding to bring articles of impeachment with a simple majority. God, Trump would love that. The House flips and the first thing they do is vote to impeach? That’s essentially handing him a second presidential term as it whips his constituency into a whole-milk froth like we’ve never seen. Especially because with democrats only holding the House and Trump’s base furious, it’s hard to imagine a republican Senate mustering the 67 votes needed to convict. He’s probably pretty safe, still. The only real exception here would be if the Mueller investigation turns up something really, really gnarly, at which time the erstwhile Never Trumpers say “I Told You So” and we wind up with the next guy. This would look a lot like Both Chambers Turning, below.

But before that happens, what happens nationally? What does a flipped House mean? Trump’s white nationalist base is out in the open now. The 30% or so of the population who think he’s about as neat as sliced (white) bread are ride-or-dies. Another 25-30% or so of the population votes the democrat ticket because it’s the lesser of two evils, and will continue to vote for more progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in primaries and downballot contests.

Meanwhile, moderate republicans (looking at you, college educated women and Zuckerbergs) will finally have had enough of being a Nazi sympathizer and find refuge in the mainstream democratic party, which now holds a comfortable plurality. This will shift the party to the right, where it will maintain its position on things like abortion rights, gun control, and climate science, but will be soft on regulating Wall Street and the tech industry. You can say goodbye to campaign finance reform, that’s for sure.

Both Chambers Turn

This is another nuclear outcome. If both chambers flip, that will indicate that more Americans are not white nationalist Nazi-sympathizers than previously thought. It will mean that the hedging of the “Never Trumpers” will be back, and an impeachment conviction is on the table. This is bad for everyone.

We need to vote Trump out of office, obviously. But to impeach him would be the final validation that he was the victim of a deep state conspiracy and martyr him to the 30% of the population who are drinking the Cool Aid, or milk, or whatever. This time the armed militias taking to the hills will be right wingers. Right wing extremists are already the most violent terror organizations targeting Americans, and this would be a declaration of war. Impeachment of Donald Trump will catalyze an armed insurgency that we have not seen in our lifetimes (except for where the US has destabilized democratically elected governments elsewhere in the world), essentially giving the US the ol’ US treatment. You remember Guatemala, right? Same deal.

 

Now, all of these options look pretty bad. It’s like best case scenario we kind of just shrug our shoulders and give in to our technocratic overlords at Google, Facebook, and Amazon and just put as much as we possibly can on our credit cards until we die. And call me jaded – until we see meaningful change at a smaller scale, that’s pretty much what national politics is going to look like.

However, all is not lost.

There are incredibly compelling initiatives and local candidates on your ballot right now. We cannot pretend to change the course of a ship the size of the US Federal Government if we can’t even steer the speedboat that is your city council. If we can’t pass bonds and initiatives to fund schools, healthcare, and open space.

If we can’t take it on ourselves to research candidates and issues, and vote based on that information, then honestly, we deserve the outcomes of the national elections that boast billion dollar advertising budgets.

It is impossible to look to national level politics clearly and not feel physically ill. But on the local level we have the power to effect meaningful change. National attack ads and voter obstruction is designed to disenfranchise you from local issues as well as national ones. Fuck that. Vote the whole ballot, do your own research, and once we get our local politics sorted out, we can look to the larger problems facing this country. Don’t worry, they’ll still be here tomorrow.

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