First, the hypothetical. The results are from the midterms, and the blue tsunami was enormous. Democrats have a 100 seat advantage in the House and have 70 seats in the Senate. Yes, I know this is extremely unlikely, but please don’t fight the hypothetical.
What do you think they would do with such an advantage? Would they impeach and convict Trump? Impeach and convict Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the Trump appointed justices, or even John Roberts? What legislation would they pass, knowing they have a veto proof majority? Would they have the guts to go for the ultimate step of removing both Trump and Vance, making the House speaker (presumably Hakeem Jeffries), the POTUS?
Let’s not get into what you would want them to do. This is strictly about what you think they actually would do.
Not much, they are incredibly passive and spineless. They’d serve as a speed bump for Trump more than the Republicans do, but I don’t see them as doing anything major as that would be “violating the norms”. In fact I expect one of the first things they’d do is ask the Republicans what they want the Democrats to do in the name of “bipartisanship”.
They’d probably screw things up. And I say that as a life-long Democrat. As Will Rogers said, “I don’t belong to an organized political party…”
Still, I’d like to think they’d impeach Diaper Don, and also go after the Supremes that lied during their confirmation hearings (Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh).
Even the spineless would probably take radical action against ICE and all of their abuses. They’d also likely reverse everything tRump cancelled, and cancel everything he started.
They would do a lot of little things for campaign material, but nothing significant or substantive. That’s not how they roll. What if they were to upset a swing voter?
This. Plus they fight/disagree among themselves so much that they can never get all the oars pulling in the same direction in order to move the vessel forward. They will screw around for a few years until the Republicans take over again. Sorry, but that’s the way I see it.
Wow, I thought I had a low opinion of the Democratic leadership!
I have no doubt that, in the hypothetical where the voters hand them one of the biggest landslide victories in history, they would impeach Trump, probably on the first day after taking office. Probably RFKJ and some of the other more notably unqualified cronies would follow. I doubt they would impeach Vance immediately, but they’d have him on a very short leash. If he was allowed to confirm a VP at all, it would have to be someone like Liz Cheney or Romney. They probably wouldn’t impeach Supreme Court Justices, unless they tried to pass some really insane decision, and they’re probably smart enough to read the room. They’d just wait until 2029 to add four or six new Justices. Aggressive Congressional inquiries into various aspects of Trump’s misrule would definitely be a thing.
Look how the Democrats turned on Obama during his second term. Look how they turned on Biden and trashed him as soon as he was out of office. Maybe it will be different this time. And maybe Lucy will let Charlie Brown kick the football.
ETA: The thing is, Democratic leadership doesn’t rule with an iron fist like Republican leadership does. It’s more like herding the chicks that Lucy and Ethel tried to control on the living room floor that time. It does require honest to God genuine leadership to get everyone to pull together and that has been missing. Not to mention there still is not a single charismatic figure for the Democrats to rally around. It just doesn’t look good. I hope your optimism is justified.
For the Democrats to get 70 Senate seats, the entire country would have moved far to the left, Politicians would behave accordingly. So, for example, the newly extreme Democrats would then take over the Supreme Court, whether by impeachments or court packing.
I don’t want to fight the hypothetical, but having 70 Senate seats is very different than having 90 or 100. With “only” 70, you might see enough Democratic defectors (4) crossing the aisle that the two-thirds majority needed to dump Trump, Vance, or Supreme Court justices via impeachment+conviction would not be reached.
I know you don’t want to fight the hypothetical, but are we allowed to consider what the hypothetical is telling us?
To get to 70 seats in the Senate (they currently have 47 seats) means they would have to flip 23 seats, and hold all 13 they have up. Of course, there are only 22 GOP seats up this year, but since we can’t fight the hypothetical I guess we assume that there is some new vacancy that is filled by special election and the Democrats win that too.
OK, so if they win all 22 GOP seats available, that means they won state-wide elections in… checks notes… Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Arkansas, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, etc…
This means a roughly, what, 30-point swing towards the Democrats? 40 points? That is a public that is flat-out demanding that Trump and Vance be removed from office.
ETA: I mean, the last time Democrats held the seat up in Kansas was 1913! If they win there something very fundamental has changed.
I earlier suggested that this would mean a big turn to the left in national public opinion, with the Democrats in Congress following in the progressive turn.
However, I’ve realized another possibility, albeit I think less likely. What if the GOP brand became so toxic – maybe due to a depression – that senators from historically red states, and house members from historically red districts, became highly beatable – without a public opinion turn to the left? In that case, Democrat primary voters, in those red states and districts, would vote for the kind of moderate candidates who usually are closest to having a chance in those red areas. And then you have a Democratic congressional delegation which is BOTH larger than today and more centrist-right than today.
So Democrats might then push through proposals that almost all of today’s Democrats want, like universal health insurance, and pushing Trump out of office, without going for lefty stuff like impeaching GOP justices. As I said, this seems less likely to me.
Tell me the names of the newly elected Democrats, and answering the thread topic question becomes a lot more possible. So long as the new guard was big enough, the old guard would bow to it.
Right, Also they would modify the Presidential right to wage war, and certainly immediately stop the war in Iran. Modify the Presidential authority on tariffs (altho SCOTUS has done a good job in doing that). Defund ICE to a large extent, and set controls on it. Pass abortion laws (these would be vetoed, and it is possible that unless the laws were watered down, the Dems might not get all the votes). Amend the “Big Beautiful Bill”, etc.
They Fix The Social Security upcoming deficit by increasing the amount taxed, by quite a bit.
For those saying “nothing” look at the 89th Congress-
So, we know what they did do- the most productive Congress in American history.
Yes. Nothing too radical. trump is gone- after all they Indicted him (first stage of Impeachment & Conviction) TWICE. Of course they will do it again.
But a modified universal health insurance (Healthcare lobby is too powerful). Medicare becomes available to the poor and anyone over 55. Obamacare is fixed and becomes more available.
Yes, but that was over fifty years ago, back when we were a country that did things. That Congress was largely staffed by people who came of age before WWII. The culture has changed: we no longer have the will to do such things.
Yep. That would fix Social Security for a LONG time, plus since us senior citizens are living longer, raise the qualifying age- but slowly and in small increments.
Re: 117th Congress. It’s a little hard to tell from the modern PR-esque naming conventions, but it seems to me that the most significant of those have to do with funding existing things and expanding on them ever-so-slightly. I’m not trying to downplay them: I think they’re great, and the Infrastructure one was long overdue. But I don’t see anything on a par with what was done in the 60s, where real and positive change occurred over a long term as a result of Congressional action.
Yes, that would be great, but I think the OP is asking about what Democrats would do with a supermajority, not what they ought to do. Have the Ds made any serious talk about uncapping Social Security taxes?
I agree with Thing.Fish. These are examples where the democrats lost elections after at least a perceived backlash to the legislative agenda they implemented.
I think they overreact to this stuff and its a big part of their issue of leading from behind. However, if voters handed them an unprecedented legislative majority right now they would correctly interpret that as a mandate to get Trump out of there.
If the Dems get their supermajority and are sworn in January 2027, let’s assume they take a month and pass a Big Awesome Bill February 1, 2027 that:
Fixes long term Social Security solvency by removing cap on payroll taxes for the extremely wealthy
Restores departments ravaged by Elon’s goons
Restores USAid
Terminates the tax cuts for billionaires
Eliminates the moronic tariffs set by He Who Shall Remain Nameless and establishes a bipartisan congressional commission to set future tariffs
Restores Medicaid funding
Makes improvements to the ACA
Makes meaningful immigration reform and paths to citizenship while simultaneously strengthening border security
Stops the Gilded Ballroom and Nazi Arch construction
Provides free Pre-K education and subsidizes childcare for low-income families
Restores sanity to the CDC and HHS
This and much more gets done by February 1, 2027. Markets react favorably, stocks go up sharply.
But suppose gas prices go up by a penny on 2/2/2027. What would voters say? “WAAAAAAH! EVERYTHING ISN’T PERFECT! IT’S ALL THE DEMOCRATS FAULT! WE NEED TO PUT REPUBLICANS BACK IN CHARGE!”