This election really is the most important in years

Carl P. Leubsdorf, Tribune News Service

Every two years, campaigning politicians declare that it’s the most crucial election in many years. This year, it really is. The reason is simple: It’s the first opportunity for voters to start undoing the damage they caused in 2024 by returning Donald Trump to the White House and giving him subservient GOP congressional majorities.

Since then, Trump’s policies have:

1. Cost Americans billions of dollars through tariffs and higher fuel and fertiliser costs.

2. Frayed the social safety net by cutting Medicaid, food stamps and support for health insurance.

3. Undercut the Constitution’s balance of powers.

4. Reversed 60 years of racial progress.

5. Damaged long-standing US alliances with fellow democracies with pro-Russia policies and the kind of foreign war he vowed to avoid. Electing a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives will halt some of those policies and provide a modest check on a president who has made it clear he thinks a president can do whatever he wants.

Electing a Democratic Senate will add additional restraints, most importantly by curbing the confirmation of blatantly unqualified Trump appointees. For two years, Trump has exercised more unrestrained power than any modern US president. He ignored congressional prerogatives by withholding funds lawmakers had approved, reversed policies benefiting the poor and racial minorities, started a costly war without congressional approval and ran roughshod over semi-independent government agencies, the press and such private institutions as universities and law firms.

A Democratic House — which seems all but certain — would mean Trump could no longer count on a congressional blank check. Oversight hearings would start what will be a gargantuan task of holding him and his administration accountable for the corruption and misdeeds of the past two years. Besides investigations, the Democrats plan to propose a modest legislative agenda. It would roll back the billions in health care cuts, restore reduced Obamacare subsidies, restrict Trump’s unilateral tariffs and try to end his war in Iran, putting pressure on the White House to block its initiatives.

While some Democrats favor renewed impeachment proceedings against the president, party leaders wisely oppose that, knowing that even a Democratic Senate won’t have the two-thirds vote needed for conviction. A Democratic Senate — which seems surprisingly possible — could do more than hold its own hearings and help pass legislation to help those the Republicans have hurt. It would mean that acquiescent Republican senators could no longer provide the votes to confirm such inappropriate and unqualified presidential nominees as Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and Todd Blanche. It could keep the GOP from stacking the judiciary and likely prevent Trump from bolstering the conservative Supreme Court majority, should a vacancy occur.

Opinion polls indicate the Democrats will likely gain far more than the three seats they need to regain the House majority they lost in 2022 and are within reach of netting the four they need to control the Senate. But Trump has waged a spirited defense of his presidency, appearing nightly in Republican strongholds, and GOP groups have spent untold millions in hopes of turning out enough Republican voters to keep the Senate and limit Democratic House gains.

Ironically, both the Democrats and the president have made Trump the main campaign issue. But the focus on the president favors the Democrats because of his historically low job approval. At the same time, the president and his Justice Department have made clear they would use every available legal avenue to contest unfavorable election results, just as Trump challenged his 2020 presidential defeat and still doesn’t accept it. They have seized on the myth that registration rolls are filled with illegal non-citizen voters — though that has been refuted in both red and blue states — by filing legal actions in California aimed at laying a basis for challenging its results.

Contending without proof there are some 20,000 illegal registrants on California’s voter rolls — a mere handful of its 23 million registered voters — the department filed a suit demanding that the state set aside any ballots from these individuals. But a federal appeals court rejected the challenge. Since California will likely elect mostly Democrats to its 52 House seats, any legal delays in certifying the results could delay the Democrats from reaching the 218 needed to control the House.

Meanwhile, in a separate action filed at Trump’s explicit direction, the Justice Department filed a preemptive challenge to a possible Republican defeat in Alaska’s Senate race. It cited the possible confusion because the four candidates include both Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a local teacher. Neither the California nor the Alaska action is likely to succeed. Both are legally dubious federal intrusions into the states’ constitutional power “to establish the times, places, and manner of holding elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate.” Ultimately, the House and Senate are the final judges of their members’ elections.

In one sense, this has been a typical midterm election, the sixth in a row in which the results are likely to represent a repudiation of the party in the White House and the fifth in which at least one house of Congress switches control. But Trump’s historic misuse of power has made the underlying stakes far greater than most. And the results will likely make the last two years of his second term far different from the first two.