Tag Archives: 2024 election

The Next Congress

By tmess2 | Published December 8, 2024

By the end of this week, the states will have completed the canvassing process, but we have all of the results from the local election authorities.  In the Senate, we knew going into the year that this would be a difficult map.  The last several cycles for this Senate class (2018, 2012, and 2006) have been generally favorable for the Democrats allowing us to keep seats in several states (Ohio, Montana, and West Virginia) that have been trending Republican.  While we hoped to keep those seats, it was always going to be an uphill battle.  The only swing state that we lost was Pennsylvania and that was a close one.  There will be a couple of vacancies due to people taking positions in the Trump Administration, but these vacancies are in Republican states and the governors should fill the vacancies rather quickly.  (It is my understanding that, in both states, the special elections for the remainder of the term will be in November 2026.)

The House was essentially a wash.  Seventeen seats changed hands with Democrats picking up a net of one seats.  Right now, the House is nominally 220-215.  However, Matt Gaetz opted against returning to avoid the release of an ethics committee report that would kill his hopes of becoming governor of Florida in 2026.  Thus, when the House convenes on January 3 to elect a speaker, the margin will be 219-215.  Shortly after January 20, there will be two more resignations by people who will be sacrificing their futures working in the Trump Administration.  That will bring the margin down to 217-215 through, at least, mid-April, when Florida will fill its two seats.  Even assuming, as seems likely given the seats, that Republicans win all of the special elections, a five-vote majority only allows the Republicans to lose two votes on a bill.

Let’s start with the bad news, it only takes a simple majority in the Senate to fill judicial vacancies.  If Trump continues to work with the Federalist Society, he should be able to get most of his nominees confirmed.  However, there are Republican judges who could have taken senior status in the first Trump Administration but didn’t.  Likewise, the presumption is that a president should get to fill his administration with whatever qualified people that he wants.  Of course, Trump like naming unqualified people to posts.  Republican Senators will have to choose which nominees to fight (or at least slow down in the hopes that they withdraw).  Right now, there are at least three nominees for cabinet level positions that the Senate should reject — Hegseth for Defense, Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence, and Kennedy for Health and Human Services.  In recent years, the tendency has been for doomed nominees to withdraw rather than forcing the Senate to officially reject them but Trump might want the fight. Continue Reading...

Posted in House of Representatives, Senate | Also tagged , , , Leave a comment

What the Indictment Might Mean for 2024

By tmess2 | Published April 1, 2023

To begin with the obvious, an indictment is a document used to formally bring criminal charges against an individual (here the Orange Menace).  Under the law, all criminal defendants are presumed to be innocent of the charged offense, and the prosecution has the burden to present sufficient evidence to convince twelve jurors to unanimously agree that the evidence proves that defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

There is no precise timetable for when a case must go to trial.  The U.S. Supreme Court has held that, as a matter of federal constitutional law, a trial begun within eight months of charges being filed is sufficiently speedy to satisfy the speedy trial clause of the U.S. Constitution.  If, as often happens, it takes more than eight months to bring a case to trial, the courts then use a balancing test to decide how long is too long.  In theory, Trump might be able to delay the trial until after the 2024 election.  If he succeeds in this goal, the problems for him will be mostly how much of a distraction the pending case(s) will be (both in terms of time and money) and how voters react to the charges.  While it’s too early to tell for sure, the initial reaction of voters seems to be that the true believers will see any accusation against their god as persecution and an attempt to block them from electing him.  This groups might be just enough to get him the Republican nomination, but this group is not large enough to get him elected.  On the other hand, a significant group of swing voters seem to be tired of the chaos and criminality associated with Trump, and these charges (unless something else comes out to undermine them) seem likely to make it harder for Trump to win the general election.

The “interesting” questions come when Trump is convicted.  (Most defendants are convicted.  While there is an old saying that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich, that saying is only half true.  Yes, the prosecution controls what a grand jury hears, but they still need some credible evidence that the defendant committed a crime.  And, after you get the indictment, you still need to win a trial.  While some prosecutors might put the hand slightly on the scale to get an indictment in a case that is a close call, it does little good to bring charges when your evidence is so weak that you have no chance at getting a conviction.)  And this is a question of ballot laws in the fifty states (plus D.C.) and the rules of the Republican Party. Continue Reading...

Posted in Donald Trump, Elections, GOP, Presidential Candidates, Primary Elections | Also tagged , Comments Off on What the Indictment Might Mean for 2024