Donald Trump is preparing to return to the Oval Office of the White House, being able to count, as eight years before, on a Congress under his control. By getting a 218my headquarters, on November 13, while the counting of votes continues in a handful of constituencies, the Republican Party has in fact retained the absolute majority in the House of Representatives obtained during the 2022 midterm elections, traditionally delicate for the party who holds the presidency.
This is a good result, considering the high number of Republican candidates in districts that favored Joe Biden in 2020. However, the narrow majority of 220 to 212 in the outgoing assembly is not expected to be expanded, and the appointment of several Republican representatives in the future administration (Elise Stefanik, Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz) will reduce it further, pending their replacement.
This control maintained over the House is added to the turnaround in the Senate obtained on November 5. By losing four senatorial seats in states won by Donald Trump (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, West Virginia), Democrats recorded the biggest defeat since 2014. It could have been even more bitter if their candidates had not won in four key states. for the Republican (Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin), which partly puts the magnitude of his victory into perspective.
End of a long reign
But the main thing for Donald Trump cannot be reduced to this arithmetic. The Republican majority in the Senate is accompanied by the end of the long reign of its leader for seventeen years, Mitch McConnell, 82, who maintained notoriously bad relations with the former businessman. The latter attempted to take advantage of this elimination by attempting to influence the election of his successor, but to no avail, as McConnell’s right-hand man, John Thune, won on Wednesday.
The Republican Party owes a lot to the octogenarian senator. The latter had taken advantage of the counterpower available to the Senate against the Democratic administration of Barack Obama. Developing a strategy of systematic obstruction of the appointments of federal judges under the latter’s mandate. Then removing the filibuster (which grants blocking power to the minority in the absence of a 60-vote majority to override it) for the confirmation of Supreme Court justices, which previously required presenting nominees by consensus.
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