Democrats Retake House, Republicans Add Seats In Senate – by Shlomo Rudman

An estimated 114 million voters, 49% of the electorate, cast their ballots in Tuesday’s midterm elections, the largest midterms vote total in US history. Republican and Democratic voters were both spurred to head to the polls en masse, Republicans to support Donald Trump, and Democrats to defeat him. Ultimately, in a rebuke to the President, Democrats won enough seats to retake the House of Representatives from Republicans, while Republicans added several Senate seats to their total, strengthening their hold on the Senate and giving President Trump some breathing room in his choices for Cabinet positions and judicial appointments.

Democrats won the national vote by a 9.2% margin, the largest since 2008 when they won 10.6% more of the vote than Republicans. Even so, President Trump hailed the Republicans pickup of several Senate seats as a “great success” and tweeted that pundits that don’t give Republicans credit for the midterm results are peddling “fake news”.

There are 23 House races which are still undecided. Republicans lead in 14 of those races, and Democrats in 9. If those numbers hold, the Democrats will have a 228-207 advantage over Republicans in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, Republicans are expected to add 3 seats, bringing their majority to 54 seats.

Democrats wasted no time in making their intentions – investigating President Trump – clear. On Wednesday morning, Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, slated to take control of the powerful House Oversight Committee said he will take a look at “all the things the President has done that go against the mandates of our Founding Fathers in the Constitution”. Rep. Adam Schiff, a Trump nemesis who is expected to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said that his committee will be taking a hard look at President Trump’s relationship with Russia and whether there is any work left to be done in the Russia probe. Democrats also intend to investigate the Trump Organizations finances, possible money laundering by Trump, and they hope to be able to get President Trump’s tax returns released.

In a Wednesday morning tweet, President Trump warned Democrats that if they investigate him, he will be “forced” to investigate Democrats for intel leaks at the Senate level. Trump’s notice of caution to Democrats is unlikely to deter them from investigating the president.

President Trump also tweeted his apparent support for Nancy Pelosi to become the next Speaker of the House, saying she “deserves” the position, and that if Democrats give her a difficult time in being elected by House members to the position, he may have some Republicans vote for her.

The last time there was a Republican in the White House with Republicans in control of the Senate and Democrats in the majority in the House was in 1986, when Ronald Reagan was president.

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