Republicans’ strong showing in Senate elections on Tuesday will not only allow President Trump to appoint a flood of conservative judges over the next two years, it will likely put a Senate majority out of reach for Democrats in 2020.
This means that even if a Democratic candidate defeats Trump, it will be impossible to enact a sweeping liberal agenda.
Though all usual caveats apply about how a lot can change in two years, here’s the uphill battle facing Democrats.
Right now, Republicans will enter the next Congress with at least 53 seats and probably 54 given that Martha McSally’s grip is tightening in Arizona. Though there’s still an outside chance Republicans will take Montana, it seems like there are enough outstanding votes in Democratic strongholds to put Sen. Jon Tester over the top.
When looking toward 2020 Senate races, the first step is to immediately deduct an additional seat from Democrats, because they are not going to hold Alabama during a presidential election year with Trump on top of the Republican ticket and when Roy Moore is not the GOP nominee.
[Byron York: For Trump, challenge of governing with Dem House, but full speed ahead with GOP Senate]
So that means, most likely, Democrats are going to have to flip five seats. But as shown in the interactive graphic below, there aren’t many pickup opportunities. Just two GOP senators — Cory Gardner in Colorado and Susan Collins in Maine — are in states that Trump lost. If Democrats win those seats, to get to 50 (assuming a Democratic vice president gets elected and becomes the tie-breaking vote) Democrats would have to win three out of the following five states: Arizona, Texas, Iowa, Georgia, and North Carolina. Every other Republican-held seat is in a state that Trump carried by double digits in 2016.
Under such circumstances, even if a massive repudiation of Trump propels Democrats into control of the Senate, the majority would be razor thin and likely comprise Democrats who would have run as centrists to win in red states. That makes it extremely unlikely that a Democratic president would be able to pursue a sweeping liberal agenda. Just hard to see a Democrat from, say, Georgia being the tie-breaking vote to nuke the filibuster to impose single-payer healthcare.
