Do The Republicans Control The Senate

The Gop Has Yet To Land A Single Top Recruit To Run For The Senate Anywhere In The Country

The surest way that Republicans can stop whatever legislative agenda President Biden has in mind after the 2022 midterm elections is to win a majority in the US Senate.

Even more than the House, a simple majority in the Senate could let Republicans gum up everything from gun control legislation to Supreme Court nominations.

On paper, it seems easy enough. Republicans need to win just a single seat in order to flip the 50-50 Senate and possibilities for doing so are all over the map. Given that midterm elections often benefit the party out of power, and Democrats control two out of three levers of the federal government, Republicans wouldnt be overly optimistic in assuming Mitch McConnell might soon rule the Senate again.

But here is the thing about the GOPs chances: At this early stage, they are having problems getting good candidates to sign up. And while the historical trends look good for Republicans you cant win something with nothing.

Republicans have yet to land a single top recruit to run for the Senate anywhere in the country even in places where they have an opportunity to flip a seat and a good candidate could make all the difference.

In Nevada, Republicans are pinning their hopes on getting former state attorney general Adam Laxalt in the race to challenge Masto, who won in 2016 by just 3 percentage points. So far, Laxalt has not announced plans to run and he comes with baggage: he lost a bid for governor in 2018.

Arkansas: Mark Pryor Vs Tom Cotton

In a stunning blow to Democrats, Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., beat two-term Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor, the first Senate Democrat to lose his seat this election cycle.

Pryors loss is a major upset to Democrats who were hoping to hold onto the seat and keep Republicans from taking control of the Senate. Pryor comes from a popular political family in the state. His father, David Pryor, represented Arkansas in the U.S. Senate and served as the states governor. The family maintains close ties with the Clintons, a connection that prompted former President Bill Clinton to campaign on Pryors behalf on multiple occasions.

But Cotton, a one term congressman and former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was able to break through Pryors deep political connections in the state. Throughout the campaign, Cotton, 37, repeatedly tied Pryor to President Obama, whose favorability has reached an all-time low, and stressed issues related to national security, including how the administrations is dealing with ISIS, on the campaign trail.

Kayleigh Mcenany Is Gaslighting America

Washington, DC President Donald Trump made a prediction about the GOP’s control of the Senate at a fundraiser this week, privately telling donors that it will be “very tough” for Republicans to keep control of the chamber in the upcoming election, namely because Trump refuses to support some senators, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.

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Buzzfeed News Has Journalists Around The Us Bringing You Trustworthy Stories On The 2020 Elections To Help Keep This News Freebecome A Member

McConnell used his power as majority leader to great effect, stonewalling bills passed in the House by both Democrats and Republicans. Rather than vote down those bills in the Senate, McConnell simply ignored them, never letting them go to a vote. Over the four years of Trumps term, McConnells Senate has hardly passed any substantial legislation, despite Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress for the first two of those years. A Republican tax cut bill in 2017 and a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill in 2018 were among the rare exceptions.

Instead, McConnell focused on confirming conservative judges. He was able to confirm 218 federal judges to lifetime appointments under Trump, including three Supreme Court justices. A lot of what weve done over the past four years will be undone, sooner or later, by the next election, McConnell said last month during the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. They wont be able to do much about this for a long time to come.

McConnells disinterest in passing legislation enraged Democrats and also drew frustration from some Republicans in the House and the Senate.

Democrats will be under intense pressure to do away with the legislative filibuster, which requires 60 votes to actually get to a vote on a bill. The filibuster means Democrats will need to get at least 10 Republicans to support any bill they want to pass.

Four Flips For Democrats One For Republicans

Going into the election, the Democrats held 47 seats in the U.S. Senate while the Republicans held 53.

The Democrats have succeeded in flipping four seats: in Colorado, where former Governor John Hickenlooper easily ousted incumbent Cory Gardner, in Arizona, where former astronaut Mark Kelly defeated incumbent Martha McSally, and in Georgia, where Raphael Warnock defeated incumbent Kelly Loeffler and Jon Ossoff defeated incumbent David Perdue.

The Republicans have wrested back one previously Democratic seat in Alabama, where one-term incumbent Doug Jones was emphatically denied a second term by Tommy Tuberville, a former college head football coach, most recently at the University of Cincinnati.

Outgoing freshman Sens. Jones and Gardner were both considered vulnerable, as each was elected with less than 50% of the vote in 2018.

Republican Thom Tilliss victory over Cal Cunningham in North Carolinaby less than 2 percentage points according to the North Carolina Secretary of States latest tallyis one of several close Senate races that were not called until after election night. In addition to the seats from Georgia, close races also include the victories of incumbent senators Gary Peters and Susan Collins , which were not called until Nov. 4.

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Collins Says Gideon Called To Concede

Senator Susan Collins of Maine told supporters on Wednesday that her Democratic opponent, Sara Gideon, had called her to concede the race. Without taking Collinsâ seat, Democrats have little change of claiming the Senate majority.

âI have news for everyone. I just received a very gracious call from Sara Gideon conceding the race,â Collins told supporters on Wednesday afternoon.

Collins, one of the more moderate members of Senate, was considered particularly vulnerable this year. If she had received under 50% of the vote, the race would have proceeded to a runoff, under Maineâs system of ranked-choice voting.

Gideon significantly outraised Collins, and hit the senator repeatedly for voting to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

United States Senate Elections 2016

Elections to the U.S. Senate were held on . A total of 34 of the 100 seats were up for regular election. Those elected to the U.S. Senate in the 34 regular elections on November 8, 2016, began their six-year terms on January 3, 2017.

Control of the Senate was up for grabs again in 2016. In order to take the chamber back, Democrats needed to gain five seats in 2016, but they fell short, picking up only two seats. Ultimately, Republican senators proved to be far less vulnerable than predicted. Some reasons for the predicted vulnerability are as follows. The majority of seats up for election were held by Republican incumbents, many of whom were freshmen who were swept into office in the Tea Party wave of 2010. Additionally, the Senate election coincided with a presidential election, which has been a boon to Democratic candidates in the past decade. Democrats had made gains in the Senate in the last two presidential elections, while they had suffered losses in the years between.

HIGHLIGHTS

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What Are Senate Special Elections And Why Do They Happen

A special election may happen for any Senatorial seat and is sometimes referred to as a bye-election. State Senators have two-year terms. In some cases, a Senator steps down from office before their term ends. A Senate special election refers to an election to fill a vacant Senate seat between a general election.

In some instances, such as in Georgia, the state Governor appoints an interim Senator to fill the vacant seat until the next general election. In other cases, special elections begin at the time an officeholder vacates their seat.

How Long Will It Last

The Republican hold on its power in the 50-50 split is just as tenuous. The Republicans radical pro-Trump faction could drive more moderate lawmakers out of the party, which would disrupt the balance of power and weaken the GOP. Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski recently floated the idea of abandoning the party. This would presumably make her an independent; she told Alaska Public Radio that she would not join the Democratic Party.

In 2001, after just four months of being in place, the power-sharing agreement was dismantled when Vermont Republican Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party and joined the Democrats, giving them true majority control.

Since the deal was only in place for four months, it never really got tested in the way it might have had things gone on longer with tougher issues, said Verdery. On paper, it looked pretty good and it worked fine, but it was only in effect for a short period of time.

Should there be no disruptions, the agreement negotiated between Schumer and McConnell this year would last until 2023. How it will look and how well it will work has yet to be tested.

There probably will be a power-sharing agreement that will be a very lame version of what was produced in 2001, said Steve Smith, a professor of political science at Washington University in St Louis. Those were different times.

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What Republican Senate Control Means For America

One of the most important memes of political intellectual culture today is that the Republicans are no better than the Democrats.;;Conservatives express this vividly in the notion of RINOs .;;Is this historically true?;;More specifically, what might a Republican-controlled Senate mean for American life beginning in 2015?

Since 1980, Republicans have controlled the Senate from 1981 until 1987, from 1995 until 2000, and from 2003 until 2007.;;The largest majority for Republicans was 55, held 1997 to 2001 and again in 2005 to 2007.;;If electing Republicans to the Senate makes no difference, then we should be able to see in the past 30 years that Republican control of the Senate renders no meaningful difference in several areas — among them poverty, unemployment, and the deficit.;

Poverty

The United States experienced the most dramatic reduction in poverty from 1996 to 2000.;;Poverty in the United States fell to an astounding level of 11 percent.;;Why?

This is an important question, given that poverty is over 15% today and we are approaching the 50th anniversary of a war on poverty.;;The Welfare Reform Act of 1995, compelled by a Republican Senate against the wishes of Democratic President Clinton, ushered in the era of big government being “over.”

Unemployment

The Deficit

Ben Voth is an associate professor of communication and director of debate at Southern Methodist University.

Poverty

Unemployment

The Deficit

How Will Democrats Control Of An Evenly

While Democrats will have some advantages controlling the 50-50 Senate, their majority could also be quite complicated.

Georgia certified election results Tuesday confirming the victories of Georgia Democratic Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to the US Senate. Their arrival in the Senate splits the partisan makeup in the chamber equally between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, a divide that has occurred only three times before in the nations history.

Warnock and Ossoff are expected to be sworn in this week after defeating former Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, respectively, in a pair of dramatic January 5 runoff elections in the southern state of Georgia that determined control of the Senate. Under the US Constitution, the vice president, in his or her constitutional role as Senate president, has the power to break tie votes, so Democrats will technically control the chamber when Democrat Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is sworn in on January 20.

Although the slim Democratic control is good news for incoming President Joe Biden, it raises many questions about how the Senate will operate and perform its most basic functions. The split comes at a time in which the country is deeply divided following four years of President Donald Trump and days after a deadly insurrection attempt that his supporters made against the US Capitol building in Washington, DC on January 6.

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What Does That Mean To Joe Biden

The narrow Democratic majority will help Joe Biden as he tries to fill out his Cabinet and pass an agenda headlined by a coronavirus relief package.

The Senate also has to set a structure for an impeachment trial for former President Donald Trump.

The House charged him with inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 but has not yet sent the impeachment article to the Senate.

Biden hopes the Senate can spend part of its time on the impeachment trial while still confirming executive branch nominees.

Divided Government In The United States

In the United States, divided government describes a situation in which one party controls the executive branch while another party controls one or both houses of the legislative branch.

Divided government is seen by different groups as a benefit or as an undesirable product of the model of governance used in the U.S. political system. Under said model, known as the , the state is divided into different branches. Each branch has separate and independent powers and areas of responsibility so that the powers of one branch are not in conflict with the powers associated with the others. However, the degree to which the president of the United States has control of Congress often determines their political strength – such as the ability to pass sponsored legislation, ratify treaties, and have Cabinet members and judges approved.

Early in the 19th century, divided government was rare, but since the 1970s it has become increasingly common.

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Who Controls The Senate 2021

• 5:59 ET, Jan 21 2021

THE Democrats are now officially in charge of the Senate – but only by the narrowest of margins.

That means President Joe Biden has inherited a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and Senate.

* Read our Donald Trump impeachment live blog for the very latest news and updates on the former president…

Isan Control Of Congress

This table shows the number of Congresses in which a party controlled either the House, the Senate, or the presidency.

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Democrats Take Control Of Senate With Twin Georgia Victories

Democrats will have a narrow control of the U.S. Senate. The chamber will be split 50-50, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris having a tiebreaking vote. Patrick Semansky/APhide caption

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Democrats will have a narrow control of the U.S. Senate. The chamber will be split 50-50, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris having a tiebreaking vote.

Democrats took exceedingly narrow control of the Senate on Wednesday after winning both runoff elections in Georgia, granting them control of Congress and the White House for the first time since 2011.

Democrat Jon Ossoff defeated Republican David Perdue, according to The Associated Press, making him the youngest member of the U.S. Senate and the first Jewish senator from Georgia. Earlier Raphael Warnock, a pastor from Atlanta, defeated GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler after a bitter campaign. Warnock becomes the first Black Democrat elected to the Senate from a Southern state.

The Senate will now be split 50-50 between the two parties, giving Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the tiebreaking vote.

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Ossoff had a narrow lead Wednesday morning when he declared victory.

“It is with humility that I thank the people of Georgia for electing me to serve you in the United States Senate,” he said.

Perdue has not conceded.

Impact on Biden agenda