Thursday sees the latest season premiere of Washington DC’s longest-running soap opera, as the 116th Congress starts work and raises the curtain on some new characters and potentially dramatic storylines that will affect us all, in one way or another, over the next two years. In particular it will have a script President Donald Trump will find increasingly uncomfortable.

Democrats take control of the most diverse House of Representatives in history, led by soon-to-be-re-elected Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has already fired the opening salvo in the battle over the current government shutdown by saying – like Al Pacino in Godfather II – the president will get “nothing” for his proposed border wall.

Pelosi has also promised that the incoming Democrats “won’t act like Republicans,” saying “We’re not going to do to them what they did to President Obama.” The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin writes that: “One wondrous result of the 2018 election, we will discover, is the near-total irrelevance of Trump’s tweets. He can say whatever wacky thing he wants, throw out whatever insults he pleases, but Pelosi is not going to be thrown off track or even alarmed. She takes his tweets as confirmation he is clueless and unstable.”

While it might be wishful thinking to imagine that the Greek chorus of presidential tweets that narrates modern political life might ever be less chaotically dramatic; the fact remains that Pelosi’s party now has its hands on the levers of accountability over President Trump and his administration, even if their overall power is restrained by a still-Republican Senate. Part of the Democrats’ mechanism for oversight is the subpoena power wielded by the incoming committee chairmen like Adam Schiff, who will run the Intelligence committee, and Maxine Waters, who in her position in charge of the Financial Services committee could push for release of Trump’s tax returns and may even be the point person should the Democrats decide to launch impeachment proceedings against the president.

Notably, the president has not been shy in his attacks on both of them.

As the new regime settles in, not only will the House be younger, more female and less white than its predecessors, it will also welcome the second most educated and least politically-experienced freshman class. It is also, largely, tech and social media-savvy, a welcome step away from recent congressional hearings, which showed some members to be anything but.

Brookings’ Casey Burgat and Charles Hunt write that:

“Successful wave elections often characterise the institution as badly in need of new energy, ideas, and processes. Young members are elected on promises of action in an environment mired in gridlock. They promise to return the House to the people through the upending of the centralised policymaking process. The 2018 election was no different, and so far, this incoming freshman class has proven willing to take on the established ways and leaders of the Hill. How long the effects of the 2018 blue wave lasts are still to be determined.”

Interestingly, one person who won’t be on the Hill on Thursday is Mark Harris, the Republican who “won” the House race in North Carolina’s 9th district, but who instead of joining the incoming class will be going to court amid a probe into alleged election fraud concerning absentee ballots.

One returning character from a previous series who will be sworn in on Thursday is former Republican presidential candidate and uncomfortable dinner companion Mitt Romney, who won a senate seat in Utah and has already signaled his displeasure with aspects of the current administration, in particular the president himself. Romney’s op-ed in the Washington Post on Tuesday was critical of the tone and style – if not the actual substance – of the Trump presidency. In it he writes:

“To a great degree, a presidency shapes the public character of the nation. A president should unite us and inspire us to follow “our better angels.” A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect. As a nation, we have been blessed with presidents who have called on the greatness of the American spirit. With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.”

While the proof of Romney’s sentiments will lie entirely in how he votes in the months ahead, in a plot shift worthy of Dynasty, they were in turn rebuked on behalf of the GOP by his own niece, Ronna McDaniel, in her capacity as RNC chairwoman. She tweeted: “For an incoming Republican freshman senator to attack @realdonaldtrump as their first act feeds into what the Democrats and media want and is disappointing and unproductive.”

Something is coming…

And sure enough, the president himself couldn’t resist, tweeting:

During something of a “rambling” cabinet meeting open to the press on Wednesday – which inexplicably featured a Game of Thrones-type poster spread across the table – President Trump said the government shutdown would last “as long as it takes” to get the wall funding he wants. There are set to be further talks on Friday, after Pelosi’s expected swearing-in.

The president also apparently thinks he is more popular in Europe than he is at home, and offered that he “might have made a good general, but who knows?” before criticising Gen James Mattis, whose resignation Trump brought forward to Jan 1st. Somewhat confusingly, after a convoluted version of the history of the conflict in Afghanistan, the president also commented that “his generals” were “better looking than Tom Cruise, and stronger.”

Trump’s two years in office so far may have been, as Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman chronicled in the New York Times recently, “A war every day, waged increasingly alone,” but they will likely seem like a casual rehearsal where the star can fluff their lines with relative impunity, compared with the spotlight about to be shone by his harshest critics. And with questions about – and among – his base adding to a sense of impending finality concerning the Mueller investigation, there’s certainly no guarantee as of today that the franchise will end up being renewed.

 

Looking ahead to the next season

All too quickly, though, the storyline will shift away from the bully pulpit to the cornfields of Iowa and the roster of upcoming auditions  for the starring role.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren this week became the first Democratic heavyweight to declare that she is forming an exploratory committee to weigh a presidential bid, and almost immediately sparked a pseudo-story about her “likeability”, prompting a flashback to Barack Obama’s “you’re likeable enough” barb to Hillary Clinton and, much more importantly, this call from Chris Hayes for sanity before the dam breaks:

In terms of political process, there was an interesting and significant development that will have a big, if as-yet unpredictable impact on the 2020 race, when the state of California moved its primary date up to March 3rd from what had been mid-June.

It’s now going to be part of the so-called “Super Tuesday” set of primary elections, along with another big prize, Texas, but California voters will get a chance to cast their ballots by mail weeks ahead of polling day. The move will certainly take some of the thunder away the traditionally front-running states like Iowa (set for Feb 3), New Hampshire (Feb 11), Nevada (Feb 22) and South Carolina (Feb 29).

It will be expensive to campaign in California as well as the other Super Tuesday states, so the move will force candidates to start raising money sooner, and while California will have more influence – and could in theory help local candidates like the state’s senator Kamala Harris – its earlier position might not be the best idea for Democrats, who ideally want the “show” that is their nomination process to go on longer without being wrapped up, so their candidates get more exposure (and more free media).

Whichever breakout candidates might emerge from the early contests, they will still have to win at least one of the first four to translate potential electability into momentum, which in turn drives fundraising.

The first primary election is traditionally in New Hampshire (Iowa is a series of caucuses, a different voting system which we’ll hear plenty about in the months ahead, so will skip explanations for now) and currently the NH polling day is scheduled for February 11. State officials though have said they could bring that date earlier – even possibly into December 2019 – depending on the potential impact of California’s new-found prominence.

I’m not sure I’m prepared to already be in an election year, but like every other dramatic plot device in the increasingly unbelievable telenovela that is American politics, nothing is really surprising anymore. The only thing we can do is keep watching!

Also published on Medium.