America's Talking - Republicans on Track to Control All Three Branches of Government

Episode Date: November 9, 2024

Republicans are on track to control all three branches of government for the first time since former President Donald Trump took the nation by surprise with his win in 2016. Although many votes are left to be counted and Americans will not know the final results with certainty for days or possibly weeks, analysts generally agree that Republicans are favored to take the U.S. House of Representatives after already reclaiming the Senate. A big development broke Thursday evening when media outlets called the tight Pennsylvania Senate race in favor of Republican Dave McCormick, who narrowly beat incumbent Sen. Bob Casey. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. While there are still plenty of votes to be counted, we know now that Republicans are retaking the White House and the U.S. Senate. And while there are a couple of dozen races to be cited in the U.S. House, it appears likely that Republicans will retain the majority in the lower chamber. joining me to discuss this today is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, a Republican trifecta? What does that mean? Well, it means a bad day if you're a Democrat. I mean, worst case scenario, your archimacy, Donald Trump is taking power and he's got the Senate and the House to back him to confirm. Of course,

the Senate can confirm his appointments quickly, can confirm his judges very quickly. And you might think that 51 senators is enough or, you know, 218 members in the House is enough because you have that majority. But there are always going to be these kind of moderate senators and members of the House who want to fundraise and make a name off of kind of being a balance to Trump. And maybe they're in purple states, purple districts. So the fact that Trump is on, you know, of course, some of this has been taken with a grand assault because votes are still being counted. But in the Senate, he's got a several senator lead, and that's still being determined just how big that is. But that protects him from one holdout or one defection being able to have a lot of power, a lot of sway. You're going to have to get, you know, a handful of senators to remain in lockstep to oppose any kind of appointments or any kind of legislation.

I think that's going to be pretty difficult. In the House, you know, it's maybe a little bit narrow, but there's so many seats, you know, a couple dozen seats that still have not been determined in. So we really don't know the fate of the House, but it does look like it's trending Republican, as you said, Polly Market, which is really the website that tracks all the betting markets and for betting on the election. And turned out it was actually almost perfectly accurate in a lot of these racism. It guessed at one point it perfectly predicted how this presidential election would go. So I think a lot of people are trusting it more now. But right now they have only a 3% chance for Democrats to control the House after the elect. So there's 3%. It could go wrong for Republicans, but right now they have it in law.

Well, let's talk about the Senate here briefly, Casey. As of this morning, Republicans have won 53 of the 100 U.S. Senate seats. So that's clearly a majority. there are Democrats have won 45. So there are two races outstanding. Yesterday, we learned that in Pennsylvania, Republican challenger Dave McCormick was declared the winner over incumbent Democrat, U.S. Senator Bob Casey. Casey has not conceded the race just yet, but McCormick's been declared the winner. That bumped Republicans to 53. How significant is that? It's huge.

I mean, for Trump to not only win Pennsylvania, but for Republicans to win that very tough seat to unseat an incumbent Democrat, I think it was a three-term Democrat, Bob Casey. It just shows you a couple of demographic changes. It primarily, it shows you that Republicans may have actually captured the working class vote in a way that's more substantive or more. permanent. Now, it's worth noting that these senators are generally underperforming Trump, but they're still winning. And so, I mean, they don't have the cult of personality that Trump does.

And maybe you could probably argue that the Republican senators are running against stronger candidates than Vice President Kamala Harris. I mean, that's going to be debated probably for years, whether she was a strong candidate or it was Biden's fault or what. But I think generally she's actually kind of a weak candidate who floundered in her race last minute. And so maybe these Republican senators are running against tougher candidates like Bob Casey. I think Bob Casey is a tough, a tough race. And so, but Republicans have been able to, over the last decade, via Trump, and really Trump alone, capture the working class voters in particular working class, white men, working class Latinos. And, you know, Trump, Dan, we talked a lot about Hispanic voters and

black voters. Generally, black voters did not support Trump as much as some of the polling suggested they would, but Trump still got double the support that he got in 2016 from black voters, a lot of that from black men. And then in Hispanics, Trump actually, it looks like, you know, voices to be encountered all that, but it looks like Trump won the majority of Hispanic voters, which is huge, especially in, you know, Southwest states, you know, Arizona, Nevada, but really all around the country. In Texas, too, we did a story. on the day after the election, that border counties in Texas, which are a majority, a Hispanic population, have been traditionally Democratic-run counties.

Trump won most of them, and it was largely based on the Latino vote going for Trump. So the border crisis certainly had an effect in those counties. But let's briefly switch to the House, Casey, the map I'm looking at. Now, 280 house seats are needed for a majority. The Republicans so far have won 211. Democrats have won 1099. So with those couple of dozen races still left, Republicans really only need to win seven of them to secure the majority.

That's right. 218 needed for the majority. I think, again, Republicans are on track to do that. The votes still being counted. why this matters besides the legislative implication, of course, which is huge, which will apply to these spending bills, these continuing resolutions. And, you know, Obamacare has already been talking about. They're going to try to repeal it more fully. It also saves Trump a lot of headaches. It saves him the headache of another impeachment. It saves in the headache of endless house

investigations and that really can drive the news cycle. I mean, the way that the way that House Republicans were able to just torment Biden by these never-ending investigations into his son, Hunter Biden, and the overseas funding and the millions of dollars. They were going through these questionable bank accounts and the checks to Hunter Biden from family members that seems suspicious. And it just kept this constant news cycle. It constantly undermined Biden. And it made it more difficult for him to govern.

And if Trump can avoid having to deal with that for two years, it's going to help him a lot. It's going to help him try it when he tries to build on the Senate majority. for instance, in two years. So there's legislative impact and there's also just the narrative and the political capital Trump has to spend in this second term presidency.

Thank you for joining us today, Casey. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.