Democrats are projected to win the House. Republicans will hold the Senate. The Left learns a new, strange respect for constitutional checks and balances.
Voters are still waiting in line to cast their ballots in some states, and Democrats are already beginning to come to grips with the utility of their new majority. They better hope President Trump ignores the precedent established by his predecessor.
It was after Republicans retook the Senate in 2014, four years after that GOP had retaken the House. Then President Obama, formerly a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, called a press conference to let the nation know he meant business even if it meant violating those antiquated checks and balances.
Obama wasn’t going to wait around for divided government:
And Obama proved a man of his word, if not of the Constitution he swore to defend and uphold. He rewrote Obamacare in multiple ways, thumbing his nose at those silly legislators who thought they were a co-equal branch. He told Capitol Hill he was going to do his own thing, and he rolled out Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Congress be damned.
The last two years of the Obama administration were a hell of a precedent, one that Democrats will now struggle to overcome. In short, they will learn to fear extra-Constitutional action.
And they should. Set aside partisan concerns. The beauty of this constitutional system is that it weighs the ambitions of one faction against the other. It is proper that Democrats check the legislative agenda of the president in the House. At the same time, in order to keep the balance of the power, it is imperative that they play ball with the White House. The alternative is ugly and bad for our Republic.
The more than likely future Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will come to this rude realization. She will learn that those who live by the pen and phone, die by the pen and phone. To keep this from happening, Democrats must cling to the Constitution.
