If the final election returns, when they finally come in, match the current polls, Joe Biden’s Democrats will win a trifecta — the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress.
Biden currently leads President Trump 51% to 44% in the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls, and by a smaller 49% to 46% margin in six target states. Current polling shows Democrats leading in races that would give them a 51-49 majority in the Senate, and they seem well-positioned to hold their majority in the House.
Of course, those numbers are not etched in stone. Plenty of poll numbers are within the margin of error, and some may turn out to be farther off the final results than that, as in the 2016 presidential race and in the last three Senate cycles.
Still, it’s worth pondering what a Democratic trifecta would mean — and how unusual it would be. You would think in a country where people increasingly vote straight tickets that one-party dominance of the federal government would be a common thing. But the electorate is so closely divided between the two historically ancient parties that we have been choosing a divided national government more often than not.
Over the last half-century, since the last horrifyingly turbulent presidential election year of 1968, Democrats have held the White House and both houses of Congress for only eight years (the Carter presidency and the first two years of Clinton’s and Obama’s), and Republicans have held them only about six and a half years (during most of George W. Bush’s presidency and the first two years of Trump’s).
So we’ve had divided government about 72% of the time, and one-party control only about 28%.
Why is undivided government so uncommon? Why doesn’t it last very long? The short answer is that presidents and parties make mistakes and overreach. As a result, predictions of long-term party majorities for either party have proven unfounded.
Republicans have lost control due to mistakes, Democrats because of ideology. The Bush Republicans lost in 2006 because of a perceived failure to prevent chaos in New Orleans and Iraq. Trump Republicans lost theirs in 2018 because of upscale suburbanites’ distaste for an arguably norm-breaking president. Democrats lost their trifectas in 1994 and 2010 by large margins after pursuing big government policies which aroused vehement opposition.
Both involved the healthcare issue. Polls show voters constantly griping about healthcare costs but also fiercely opposing change in current arrangements. That helps explain why voters opposed Obamacare in 2010 and so long as Barack Obama was president, but once Donald Trump took office, opposed Republicans’ proposals to repeal or modify it.
Into the 1990s, divided government prevailed, with a perceived Republican lock on the presidency and an apparently eternally Democratic House of Representatives. Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich changed that and proceeded to forge policy compromises that arguably reformed health care and balanced the federal budget — until the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke.
Since that event, bipartisanship has faded. Each party has had some reason to hope that the next election, or the one after that, would give them the trifecta and let them pass the policies of their dreams.
So, George W. Bush got a few crucial Democratic votes on taxes and Iraq but none on Social Security. Barack Obama, having passed the stimulus and Obamacare with Democratic supermajorities, spurned the Simpson-Bowles reforms and a budget deal. Donald Trump accepted Paul Ryan’s tax package but was blocked from Obamacare repeal by John McCain’s last-minute switch.
In this year’s campaign, the rally-loving Donald Trump hasn’t reached out to the voters his party lost in 2018. His basement-lodged rival, Joe Biden, hasn’t done much to attract those his party lost in 2016.
Biden and Democratic Senate candidates have dodged commitments on the Supreme Court packing and the Green New Deal, which left-wing Democrats are pushing but which most voters oppose. They talk vaguely about altering health insurance policy, which has proven unpopular for administrations of both parties. So have the tax and spending increases which they, like past Democrats, have proposed.
The Biden campaign’s TV ads have promised a return to serenity after the turmoil of the Trump years. But past Democratic trifectas have produced turmoil of their own, as the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes of those days sought bigger-government policies and backbench Republicans have vociferously opposed them.
It’s possible that, if Democrats win the trifecta the polls say they’re headed for, they may find it as turbulent and short-lived as both parties’ trifectas in the past half-century. Or that voters, with a seeming distaste for any trifecta, veer away from the polls’ path and deny Democrats full power this time.
