Special to WorldTribune.com

By Sol W. Sanders

There is enormous potential importance to next week’s Mid-term elections; perhaps as much as the hype that has been given them by the media. The media — a majority of it seemingly highly anti-Trump, and their polls, given their recent poor performances, are not a lot of help in predicting this outcome.

So we are left with our own, hopefully informed speculation.

There appear to be three possible outcomes of the Midterms, all of which have potentially quite different consequences: 1] That the Republicans will lose their majority in the House of Representatives although perhaps simultaneously gaining three or four seats in the Senate which they now hold so precariously; 2] that the Republicans will regain — if losing some seats — their control of the House of Representatives and gain a firmer hand in the Senate; or 3] that the Republicans will lose control in both Houses.

We are ready to stick our necks out and choose the likelihood of the No. 2 option.

We believe, again because of the outrageous prejudice of most of the mainline media exhibited in both their reporting and editorializing against the President and any part of his following, they are minimizing the effect of The Kavanaugh Scandal and other issues which have sent sympathizers into the Trump/GOP corner. We saw The Kavanaugh Scandal as an outrageous attempt to smear a longtime public servant as did many others, which, in the end, backfired.

Since Donald K. Trump is to continue two more years in office whatever the changes in pubic opinion, we believe either [1 or 3] would lead to a period of confusion and bad government.

It would be different if the Democrats were reaching for office with a program. But having abandoned earlier support for issues on which both parties — and presumably the majority of voters agreed — such as the need to close the southern border with a wall, they have no alternative but opposition to whatever Trump policies he has initiated, or in truth, haphazardly have fallen into place. On the latter, we see the roaring economy which we attribute as much as anything else to noninterference by Administration policy other than its unintended neglect as a case in point.

Contrary to a superficial interpretation, we do not see No. 2 — the Administration holding all the reins — as necessarily any assurance of better government by the Trump Administration. To hold all three branches of the U.S. government under one political control, however tenuous it would be, would not necessarily be a blessing. The American people by repeatedly electing divided government have proved that is also their belief, however inchoate.

Actually, the three branches have been in the hands of one Administration/Party fairly often in our history:

• Between 2001 and 2007, while President George W. Bush occupied the White House, GOP controlled at certain points all three branches. Control was interrupted when the 2002 midterm elections shifted control of the upper chamber.
• From 1961-1969, Democrats controlled all three branches during the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
• The 83rd Congress (1953-1955), during the presidency of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, saw the deaths of nine senators and the resignation of one. Republicans held the Senate majority during those years with the party holding the White House and Supreme Court.
• From 1937-1945, Democrats during the administrations of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman controlled all three branches.
• And from 1927-1933, Republicans controlled all three when Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover occupied the White House.

If we are speculating correctly, then, the Trump Administration is not only likely to go on to a second successful four-year term, but consolidate the hold that conservatives now have on the political scene. That would reverse the long period of slightly left-of-center domination of our national politics since the advent of the Roosevelt Administration in 1933.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@twc.com), is a contributing editor for WorldTribune.com and Geostrategy-Direct.com.

  After the October outrages, here is my informed speculation about next week’s election, WorldTribune.com