Control of the Senate will be critical to the installation of the new Trump administration, since Senate confirmation is required for every cabinet and top sub-cabinet official, as well as the appointment of federal judges and top military officers. At this point, the new Senate has a 52-45 Republican majority, which could go as high as 55-45 if the Republicans win all four of the seats that remain undecided. They presently lead in two of the four.
The position in the House of Representatives is presently less definitive. Republicans held only an eight-seat majority, 220-212, with three seats vacant, on Election Day. As of this writing, Republicans had won 216 seats and the Democrats 209, with 10 seats undecided.
There were 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate at stake, with 24 held by the Democrats and only 10 by the Republicans. Eighteen Democrats have won reelection, while the Republicans retained all 10 of their seats. Republicans captured the open seat in West Virginia vacated by retiring Democrat Joe Manchin and defeated two Democratic incumbents, Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Jon Tester in Montana, for a net gain so far of three seats.
In the three seats where no winner has yet been declared, Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego led Republican election denier Kari Lake in Arizona by 61,273 votes, but with only 60 percent of the votes counted. Republican hedge fund multi-millionaire David McCormick held a lead of just under 33,788 votes over incumbent Democrat Robert Casey in Pennsylvania with less than 5 percent of the vote still outstanding.
The contest in Nevada between Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen and Republican Sam Brown was virtually tied, as Brown led by 6,034 votes with 220,000 votes (15 percent) still to be counted.
The three new Republican senators-elect are all extreme reactionaries aligned with Trump, and in some cases personally chosen by him. The new senator from West Virginia will be Governor Jim Justice, a billionaire coal baron who is the richest man in the impoverished state. Bernie Moreno, the victor in Ohio, is a wealthy car dealer hand-picked for the race by Trump.
In Montana, the Republican winner, Tim Sheehy, is another multi-millionaire, a former Navy SEAL who made disparaging remarks about women and Native Americans in the course of the campaign. Only briefly a resident of Montana, Sheehy was imposed on the state Republican Party by the Trump campaign.
While the Democrats effectively conceded the West Virginia race when Manchin announced his retirement, their defeats in Ohio and Montana came despite vast outlays of campaign cash.
The Ohio contest was the most expensive in American history, with more than $500 million spent by the two capitalist parties and their supporting Super PACs. The Montana race was even more expensive on a per capita basis, with more than $250 million spent in a race where fewer than 600,000 people cast ballots—more than $400 per vote.
Six-figure sums were expended in other close Senate contests: $240 million in Pennsylvania and $180 million in Michigan, as well as in Wisconsin, Arizona, Texas and Florida. In nearly every race, the Democratic Party raised and spent more money than the Republicans.
In contests for the House of Representatives—where the Democrats again enjoyed a sizable financial advantage—results were more mixed than for the Senate and added up to little or no change. In the Northeast and Midwest, the Democrats defeated three Republican incumbents in New York state, but lost two of their own seats in Pennsylvania and one in Michigan.
Five seats switched parties in the South, all because of changes in district boundaries, with the Republicans gaining three seats in North Carolina through a gerrymander, while Democrats gained seats in Louisiana and Alabama by court orders overturning racially biased district lines. Not a single seat changed hands throughout this vast region otherwise, so consistently are the boundaries drawn to protect incumbents.
In the West, Democrats captured Republican seats in Tucson, Arizona and outside Portland, Oregon, but Democratic incumbent Mary Peltola in Alaska lost her race for reelection.
This patchwork of results left the Republicans with a seven-seat majority, pending the outcome of extremely close contests in Maryland, Iowa and Nevada and for seven seats in California, where nearly all voting is by mail and the count has historically dragged on for more than a week. Democrats would have to sweep all the remaining undecided races to gain control of the House.
One feature of the congressional races confirms the steady rightward movement of the Democratic Party, which has more and more become an instrument of the military-intelligence apparatus, even as the Republican Party has become a fascist organization subordinated to the would-be dictator Trump.
The contingent of Democratic members of Congress with military-intelligence backgrounds—in most cases moving directly from the national-security state to the legislature—continues to grow in size and influence.
Two of the CIA Democrats, as the WSWS has labeled them, moved up from the House to the Senate, with former National Security Council official Andy Kim easily winning the open Senate seat in New Jersey, and former CIA, National Security Council and Pentagon official Elissa Slotkin narrowly winning in her race for the open Senate seat in Michigan. Former military officer and Democratic congressman Jeff Jackson won his race for attorney general of North Carolina.
All nine of the CIA Democrats seeking to retain their seats in the House won—Jared Golden in Maine, Jake Auchincloss in Massachusetts, Pat Riley in New York, Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, Chrissy Houlahan and Chris DeLuzio in Pennsylvania, Dan Davis in North Carolina, Jared Crow in Colorado, and Sara Jacobs in California.
And two more such figures are headed to Washington. Retired Army lieutenant colonel Eugene Vindman won a narrow victory in Virginia’s Seventh Congressional District, which extends from northern Virginia to Richmond. Vindman and his brother Alexander were on the National Security Council in the Trump administration and played key roles in triggering the first impeachment of Trump in 2019 on charges of delaying military aid to Ukraine. Vindman will replace Democrat Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA agent who stepped down in order to run for governor of Virginia next year.
In New Hampshire’s Second Congressional District, retiring Democrat Annie Kuster will be succeeded by Maggie Goodlander, the wife of Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and herself a veteran of the military-intelligence apparatus, including working on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee for senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, and a decade in the Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer.
Another 21 Democratic candidates from military-intelligence backgrounds lost their races, some because they were running in heavily Republican districts, others in competitive races where they were swamped by the overall collapse in support for the Democratic Party.
Photo: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell R-Ky. speaks during a news conference about the election at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024 © AP Photo / Jose Luis Magana.
Source: World Socialist Web Site.
