NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, November 6th, 2018

A NEW MAJORITY: Democrats capture control of the U.S. House of Representatives

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has won con­trol of the Unit­ed States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and will be able to pro­vide a much-need­ed check on Don­ald Trump’s pow­er begin­ning in just a few weeks, NBC News is projecting.

Democ­rats were able to build a House major­i­ty by knock­ing out Repub­li­can incum­bents in a wide swath of states, from Vir­ginia to Penn­syl­va­nia to New York to New Jer­sey to Texas. NBC News made its pro­jec­tion before the dead­line to return bal­lots in Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon, and Cal­i­for­nia, where Democ­rats are hop­ing to knock out even more Repub­li­can incum­bents — espe­cial­ly in South­ern California.

Because we still don’t have results in many juris­dic­tions, the size of the incom­ing major­i­ty isn’t clear, but the impor­tant thing is that con­trol of the House has flipped, and Democ­rats will be able to put an end to the days of a Repub­li­can Con­gress con­tin­u­al­ly doing Don­ald Trump’s bid­ding in the Unit­ed States Capitol.

The Repub­li­cans will still have con­trol of both cham­bers of Con­gress until ear­ly Jan­u­ary — when Repub­li­cans will be forced to turn over their gavels to the Democ­rats — so there are a few weeks left for them to inflict fur­ther dam­age on the coun­try by pass­ing destruc­tive leg­is­la­tion. How­ev­er, Democ­rats do retain the abil­i­ty in the Sen­ate to fil­i­buster leg­is­la­tion (at least for now), which could help foil Repub­li­can dreams of pass­ing bad bills dur­ing the lame duck session.

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