Comment by justinzollars | Hacker News Reader

Comment by justinzollars | Hacker News Reader

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Biden will be the First Democrat since Grover Cleveland to take office without a Democratic Senate. The House majority is smaller. So his mandate is effectively toast. Another interesting historical fact. America has never elected 4 consecutive 2 term presidents. If Trump would have been elected it would have been the first time in US history that this has happened. This election wasn't a blue wave by any means, Trump underperformed House Republicans in many swing states implying this was more of a personal decision rather than political.

What do I see changing? Not much:

  - foreign policy: policy changes with Syria and Iran

  - China: An end to tariffs

  - local changes: No more federal opposition to safe injection sites in San Francisco

  - federal taxes could still go up, the Senate has two liberal Republicans who could deliver tax increases to Joe
  
  - expanded federal regulations that do not require changes to the law

What will likely not happen:

  - PR and DC becoming states is no longer plausible

  - packing the Supreme Court is no longer plausible

  - a green new deal or expansions to entitlements are no longer plausible

  - state bailouts are now in question, which could force major structural reforms

I wouldn't rule the GA senator red absolutely until the runoff but it does seem the more likely result to guess at the moment (IMO). Remember if the Senate is even the VP acts as tiebreaker.

Here is a useful chart for anyone wanting to look at historical senate share https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Combined...

On the "change" side I'd throw in I'm interested to see how the FCC commissioners change over the next couple of years and what impact that has on things.

On the "not likely to happen" I never understood how packing the supreme court was supposed to be possible in the first place unless members of the court started dropping like flies all of the sudden.

responding to your question on the court, the threat was an expansion of the number of justices on the court.

Ah thanks, makes sense.

"America has never elected 4 consecutive 2 term presidents."

This seems like one of those facts that is so arbitrary as to be basically statistical noise. How many times have we had three consecutive 2 term presidents anyway (i.e. an opportunity for the 4th president to be a consecutive 2 term president)?

I thought it was a cool fact.

You're forgetting by far the most important item: some efforts to combat climate change will happen. This single issue should have been enough to mark Biden as preferable to Trump, even if everything else had been worse.

This is completely true. We will have more regulation. This list is not exhaustive and is my personal opinion on the way I see things changing. I'll attempt to modify

That depends on the Georgia runoffs in January. If the Dems win those two seats, then along with Harris's tie breaking vote they would have a senate majority.

Do you have some information the runoff? I wasn't aware about that.

https://text.npr.org/932068951

interesting. I was not aware of this. Thanks

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