Presidential Elections Of 2016

Donald Trump Presidential Candidacy Creates Possible Democratic Party Opportunity For Majorities In Both Houses Of Congress In 2016 Election!

Donald Trump is a nightmare for the Republican Party, and it is now a strong possibility that his involvement in the 2016 Presidential campaign will help the opposition Democrats to gain control of both houses of Congress in the next election.

The Democrats have lost seats steadily since they lost the majority in the 2010 Midterm Elections, first losing the House of Representatives in 2010, and then the US Senate in 2014.

The Senate is already in play, as 24 seats of Republicans are up in 2016, very different dynamics than in 2014, when the Democrats had the bulk of the seats to defend, and lost nine seats. A gain of four or five is all that is needed to gain control, depending on whether the Democrats win the White House, which right now is extremely likely, due to the vast edge in the Electoral College.

The House of Representatives is much tougher, with a need to gain 30 seats by the Democrats, but with a split and divided Republican Party, with 17 candidates for President, and Donald Trump being like a bull in a China shop, the Republicans could lose that many seats, particularly if Trump ends up running as a third party or independent candidate in the fall of 2016.

It would be really powerful if the Democrats won the White House, and both houses of Congress, insuring a progressive four years to follow up on the progressive changes under President Barack Obama.

After years of gridlock and stalemate, the Obama legacy could be cemented by Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders or Martin O’Malley, with the likelihood of Clinton winning still seen as almost certain. But any of these four could be a President who could have real success, possibly with the indirect assistance of Donald Trump!

Disturbing Statistics On The Midterm Elections Of 2014: The Battle Cry For Progressives And Democrats!

Despite the economic improvements under Barack Obama and the obstructionism of the Republican Party for four years, the GOP won control of both houses of Congress, and reelected many Tea Party Governors, who by all sane judgements, should have been defeated.

Beyond that, 30 state legislatures now are controlled by the Republican Party; two thirds of state legislators nationally are Republicans; 31 states have Republican Governors; and the Republicans have a greater number of seats in the House of Representatives than they have had since 1928, when Herbert Hoover was elected, soon to be followed by the Great Depression.

And the percentage of voters participating was the lowest in any midterm election since 1942, in the midst of World War II, only about a third of the voting electorate.

This midterm was dominated by people over 45, and particularly over 65, who were heavily white and registered Republican, while traditional Democratic voting groups–African Americans, Latinos, women, those under 45, and those supportive of labor rights and the environment—stayed home in large numbers, not realizing the importance of voting.

If left to their own desires, the Republican Party, the Tea Party Movement, and the conservative think tanks and talk show hosts, would now set about to impeach President Obama (even though there is no chance of his removal by a two thirds vote of the US Senate); repeal ObamaCare; repeal the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; privatize Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; prevent any action on climate change; further destroy the labor unions that remain viable; continue to promote voter suppression which assisted the GOP victory; continue to allow the Koch Brothers and other reactionary billionaire and millionaire domination of campaign expenditures; fight to undermine feminism and civil rights enforcement; work against immigration reform; reverse the movement toward gay marriage and gay and lesbian equality under the law; and become engaged in multiple overseas wars that benefit powerful corporations and defense industries.

Here we are in the second decade of the 21st century, and we are more like the Gilded Age and the 1920s domestically, but with the addition of the war industries that have our young men and women, many of them from poor families, who are utilized as cannon fodder for war profits, and then mistreated as veterans in years after their war service!

Is this the kind of America that the majority of this nation want? If it is, they will get what they deserve. But there is a sneaking suspicion that this will, hopefully, motivate the vast two thirds of the population who did not vote, to rise up and participate in insuring, for the short run, resistance to the GOP agenda, and longer term, to insure a Democratic Senate and a Democratic President are elected in 2016!