What will happen if Democrats retake the House?

At least domestically, it would be game over for the president

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Since this time last year, there has been almost non-stop focus on the Democrats' odds of retaking the House of Representatives this fall. The breathless reporting about the latest generic ballot polling is layered on top of new Cook Political Report ratings every time a Republican seeks the sweet release of retirement over the lasting pain of defeat, and the whole concoction is then topped with the breadcrumbs of each Democratic special election over-performance and put in the oven. What will emerge is still anyone's guess.

But this horse-race thinking has rarely been joined to an analysis of what Democrats might do with their newfound power beyond impeaching the president. Of course, it must be said that there is no guarantee that Democrats will retake the House. One sobering thought: Throughout the past few weeks of White House personnel chaos, massive public protests against gun laws, the Stormy Daniels fiasco, and the invitation of stone cold lunatics into the inner circle of power, the president's approval ratings have gone up slightly. But let's pretend for a moment that this is just slow news cycle doldrums, and that when election time rolls around, Democrats will be as fired up as they have been since the morning after the 2016 election.

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David Faris

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.