A week ago, CQ Politics laid out three scenarios for the how the midterms might turn out. All of them were painful to contemplate. Essentially the scenarios were ‘catastrophically bad,’ ‘unthinkably bad, and ‘just plain awful.’ In the middle scenario, the Democrats didn’t do as badly as they have a right to fear.
Democrats narrowly held the Senate, but Republicans gained eight seats, cutting the majority’s cushion to two. Votes are still being tallied in some close House races, but Republicans are poised to gain at least 45 seats, giving them a handful more than they need for control…
…Republicans knocked off four Democratic incumbents, including Sens. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Russ Feingold (Wis.) and appointed Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.). In addition, tea party favorite Sharron Angle dislodged Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) from his seat in Nevada.
Both candidates were very unpopular by the end of the race, but Reid was never able to climb out of the mid-40s and became the second Democratic Majority Leader to lose re-election in the past four cycles.
Republicans also picked up four Democratic open seats: North Dakota, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Illinois.
What would the Senate look like under these circumstances? Well, I decided to investigate. The first thing of note is that a 52-48 ratio requires a resetting of the balance of committee assignments. So, for example, presently the Senate Armed Services Committee has 16 Democratic slots and 12 Republican ones. That would change to a 15/13 split under this scenario.
Here is how the new committee would look. You can compare it to the present committee here.
Gone from the Democratic side are interim senators Ted Kaufman, Roland Burris, and Carte Goodwin, as well as Evan Bayh. On the Republican side, George LeMieux is gone. One seat has flipped from Democratic to Republican control, so the net result is that the Democrats have one less member but three slots to fill, and the Republicans have one more member and two slots to fill.
We’re actually fortunate that this committee has an even number of seats because most of them have an odd number of seats and our majorities will be reduced to one.
The makeup of the Armed Services won’t change dramatically, but we’ll still need both Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson to defeat Republicans amendments. Other committees will be less forgiving, as I will demonstrate at a later time.
So, remember what we’re fighting for here. Things are bad enough in the Senate as it is.
