Here We Go Again

I don’t do this very often. I’m going to quote in full the Wall Street Journal after-election editorial:

Democrats won an historic midterm election victory Tuesday, and congratulations on again having real legislative power. The question now is what lessons Democrats will take from their triumph, and whether they’ll return to the same mistakes of the Biden era that cost them so dearly in 2024.

The first essential lesson is that voters are handing Democrats power because they wanted to rebuke President Trump. They think he failed to deliver on his promise to lower prices, and they don’t like his excesses on the rule of law, tariffs, mass deportation, and crony cashing in.

Voters weren’t endorsing the Democratic Party, which stands at 29% approval in the latest NBC poll, below even the 38% for the Republican Party. Voters also weren’t embracing a Democratic policy agenda, since the party didn’t offer one. Candidates chanted “Trump” like an incantation and then talked about costs and corruption. They offered little specificity about how to reduce costs.

One Democratic priority is sure to be investigating the executive branch and the Trump family businesses, and some oversight is warranted. Mr. Trump’s misuse of the pardon power, his cryptocurrency plays, and Don Jr.’s investments in firms that do business with the government are all worthy subjects. Ditto for the government loans to or investment in private firms, especially those in which Trump family companies have stakes.

More scrutiny on policy matters could also be usefully informative. Who really throttled Ukraine’s Starshield satellite access? And let’s learn more about the U.S. agreement with Alejandro Betancourt, the Administration’s politically connected partner in its preferential deal to exploit Venezuelan oil resources.

The political danger is that Democrats won’t be able to control themselves. They didn’t in Mr. Trump’s first term, and it cost them politically. One key test will be whether they can resist the calls to impeach him again. Nancy Pelosi didn’t, and her efforts merely solidified the President’s Republican support. Unless Democrats uncover something serious enough to get Republican Senators to convict after a House impeachment, they would be wise to settle for oversight and informing the voters.

Legislatively the next two years will feature the frustrations of divided government. Unfortunately for the country, given the $40 trillion debt and last year’s $2 trillion deficit, Congress typically papers over disagreements by spending even more.

Did Democrats learn a lesson from Mr. Biden’s spending binge, which fueled the inflation that cost him re-election? As workers worry about energy prices, will the party go straight back to climate mandates and subsidies for expensive electric cars?

Ditto for other ideological excesses from Mr. Biden’s time. Democrats pushed hard for H.R.1, their bill to nationalize election rules on California’s model, including overriding state laws against ballot harvesting. Will that reappear? Likely new House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries has called for “dramatic Supreme Court reform,” which won’t get Mr. Trump’s signature. But if Mr. Jeffries keeps talking that way, it will be a serious reason for voters not to trust his party with total power in 2029.

If he and likely Senate leader Chuck Schumer want a better path, they could seek compromise with Republicans to benefit the country. Permitting reform is one example. Another might be immigration.

Mr. Trump has sometimes spoken of wanting to help “Dreamers” brought to the U.S. as children. Democrats, meantime, have castigated the President for killing the border bill negotiated in 2024 by Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, which would have codified a stricter legal standard for asylum. Such a change to the statute is worth Mr. Trump’s support, since it would outlast him and make it harder for the next President to reopen the southern border.

One difficulty for Democrats will be the radicals in their ranks. The House “squad” will double in size, and the socialist left will feel empowered. New York Rep.-elect Darializa Avila Chevalier has argued that it’s immoral to deport even violent criminals. Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed wants to purge Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, for the offense of believing Israel has a right to defend itself. Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has floated a Supreme Court with 13 Justices.

None of that will improve the party’s approval rating. It could also lead voters to conclude in 2028 that the post-Trump Republican Party doesn’t look so bad after all.

I sincerely wish that both parties will learn the lessons this election taught. I think it’s far more likely they’ll continue to promote what their more extreme supporters want on the shaky assumption that will get them re-elected.