MOREFIELD: Is There A Silver Lining To Democrats Winning It All?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that the GOP is headed for an electoral defeat of fairly epic proportions in the midterms. It’s nearly certain the House will flip, and betting odds are currently more than 60 percent that the Senate will fall to Democrats as well.

I had long made my peace with a House loss, as this almost always happens to the party in the White House in off-year elections. But just a year or two ago it seemed like Republicans had the best Senate map in a while coming up, full of seemingly safe incumbents and vulnerable Democrats in Georgia, Michigan, and even New Hampshire.

Not anymore, obviously. That’s how far down President Donald Trump has brought the Republican Party with his ill-conceived decisions this time around. If we get out of this with a 50-50 split, I’ll be shocked and relieved, but it’s more likely to be Dems by at least two or three seats, meaning a net loss of five or six for the GOP.

Don’t get me wrong. John Thune has been among the weakest, most inept Senate Majority Leaders in U.S. history, and the scorn I have for him and his ilk knows no bounds. In fact, if I thought he truly wanted to keep his majority, maybe I might be rooting for him to lose it. But it’s evident that he and other entrenched members of the political establishment likely relish the thought of going back to the minority and letting Democrats do the actual governing. It increasingly seems that both parties are two sides of the same coin, though I briefly hoped that, with Trump, maybe that wasn’t the case.

Thune’s preferences aside, losing the Senate will be a particularly brutal blow, mainly because of judges and appointments. I know there have been plenty of Trump-appointed duds, but still, any chance we had of continuing to remake the judiciary into one that will preserve our freedoms and largely interpret the law, rather than attempting to make it, will come to a grinding halt. What’s worse, any ‘bipartisan’ legislation that comes through both chambers and is signed by Trump is bound to be particularly bad.

As critical as I have been of the president’s actions over the past year, particularly his decision to launch this ridiculous war for Israel against Iran, you might think I’d be happy about this, but you’d be wrong. In truth, I take no pleasure in it. Even now I want to be wrong, because as bad as Republicans have been, I know full well that Democrats with power again are going to be worse. Far, far worse.

However, as weird as it may be to acknowledge this, there may be a silver lining to Democrats being in power again. OK, I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t blame you, but please, hear me out. Think about the accomplishments of Trump and his Republican-controlled Congress over the past two years. Not the bad things like, you know, ballooning the national debt, protecting pedophiles, and launching a pointless war, but the accomplishments.

You might list things like deregulation, law and order in major cities, and especially border security (don’t get me started on deportations), and you’d be right. But remember, all those things are easily reversed when Democrats take the trifecta, as they probably will, after 2028. The immigration spigot, largely turned off for four years, will be turned on at ten times the level it was during the Biden era. They’ll be more than eager to make up for lost time, and then some.

Will it mean the end of America as we once knew it and the end of any sort of conservative governance for the foreseeable future, if not forever? Possibly. If the stars align and Democrats play their hand right, they could make things really hard for us. Imagine a couple more states with four more automatic Democratic senators. Imagine the Senate filibuster gone, paving the way for every horrific DSA wet dream imaginable, from national speech and gun bans to rent and price controls. Imagine a leftist-packed Supreme Court rubber-stamping the insanity into perpetuity. It will get ugly, and sadly there’s no avoiding it.

Here’s the thing, though. With the current Republican crop’s bad decisions, ineptitude, and inability to even try to take their own shot by eliminating the filibuster themselves and passing things to make life better for Americans to the extent that they actually win elections, we were headed in the same direction, only slower. And heading in the same direction is no recipe for turning things around.

In other words, things need to get dark, really, really dark, before they can possibly get better. Think of it like a drug addict who needs to reach rock bottom before they realize they have to change. The hope here would be that once Democrats eliminate the Senate filibuster and pass all their crazy sh*t, the public backlash will be so intense that they will consider giving someone else — another crop of Republicans or even a third party — a shot. And this time, the filibuster won’t be holding us back from passing actual laws.

I wish this wasn’t true. I wish Trump and Republicans had taken advantage of this historic opportunity, avoided starting a war that wrecked our economy, implemented mass deportations, built the wall, and made some lasting changes to the law, all of which would have resulted in our side keeping power, but they didn’t. So now, it looks like the next dawn will be preceded by the darkest hour this country has ever seen.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.