Midterms are usually a referendum on the party in power. The elections Tuesday are also shaping up as a stress test for some of the biggest assumptions in American politics.
Democrats see a potential blue wave that could hand them control of the House and Senate and put a check on President Trump. Still, they must win statewide in places Trump carried comfortably two years ago while fending off doubts about the party’s socialist candidates.
In the Senate, a 50-50 split is the one outcome neither party wants among all the possible results.
It would still leave Republicans with a technical majority because Vice President J.D. Vance serves as president of the Senate and can break any tie votes
Whether that majority could function would depend largely on Republican centrists, such as Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who could single-handedly derail confirmation of President Trump’s nominees. The legislative landscape would be less affected because most measures would still require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
As for the president, The Trump era could effectively end Tuesday if Americans hand Democrats control of Congress.
Democrats in the House and Senate are already plotting how to rein him in if they take the majorities.
All that stands in their way is Republican turnout, which the GOP hopes will be robust enough to blunt the blue wave that most analysts and polls predict.
Meanwhile, here locally, Washington, D.C. voters are set to elect the first democratic socialist mayor in the city’s history, while Marylanders cast ballots in a congressional redistricting skirmish.
The elections also feature Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s reelection bid and some last-minute drama on the D.C. Council, with former Council member Robert White resigning his seat to become eligible to serve as the District’s nonvoting representative in Congress.
The rise of Janeese Lewis George from a D.C. Council member to prospective mayor could heighten tensions between her administration and the White House. Lewis George frequently criticized President Trump’s involvement in the District’s affairs on the campaign trail.
And finally … Hackers have hijacked supermarket refrigerators and freezers across Europe and sabotaged the machines, the latest salvo in a wave of mysterious cyberattacks.
The attacks in Belgium, Sweden, Ireland and Estonia match those that the Defense Department is investigating after widespread freezer outages hit several domestic military bases in August and again in October.
A similar attack hit France last month, when hackers sent temperatures soaring in hundreds of supermarkets and independent stores.
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