The Critical Upcoming Election

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FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | October 18, 2018freadshot

“The stakes in our elections are always high, but in this election they are momentous.”

With 19 days left before the midterm elections it now appears likely that we are heading for Democrats winning control of the House and Republicans maintaining, or perhaps strengthening, control of the Senate.

According to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, Democrats have an 84% chance of winning the House and Republicans have an 80% chance of maintaining control of the Senate.

The stakes in our elections are always high, but in this election they are momentous.

If Republicans maintain control of both the House and Senate, they will be able to use the budget reconciliation process to pass major legislation by simple majority votes, such as a second tax bill greatly favoring the rich.

Importantly, the threat of Trump curbing or shutting down the Mueller investigation will greatly increase, and there will be no effective oversight of the Trump Administration.

If Democrats take the House, they will be able to block any misguided Trump legislative policies, conduct extensive oversight hearings on our reckless President and his Administration, and begin the fight to repair our democracy and political system.

According to POLITICO, House Democratic Leader Pelosi recently said that a package of campaign finance reforms would be the Democrats’ first bill in the 116th Congress if they take the chamber.

House Democrats are prepared to move immediately on a series of broad democracy reforms including campaign finance, voting rights, nonpartisan redistricting, and executive branch and congressional ethics reforms.

Passage of this package of democracy reforms in the House would lay down a marker, and the battle would then shift to the Senate for the next few years, with the goal of enacting these reforms into law in the 2021-2022 Congress.

Democracy 21 is part of a national coalition that will fight for these reforms for as long as it takes to enact them.

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Fred Wertheimer is the Founder and President of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to strengthen our democracy and ensure the integrity and fairness of government decisions and elections. See previous Notes from Fred here.