When A Majority Isn’t A Majority

     Now and then, that’s the case in the United States Senate:

     New polling numbers out of the states of Ohio and Wisconsin are very good news for Mitch McConnell and very bad news for Chuck Schumer. Panic seems to be setting in for Democrats as they see their chances of retaining control of the Senate slip from their grasp.
     In Ohio, Democrat incumbent Sherrod Brown is consistently polling behind his Republican rival, Bernie Moreno. RedState reported last week on polling from RMG Research that showed Moreno ahead of Brown by a 48 percent to 46 percent margin. New polling out from ActiVote confirms Moreno’s lead, with the new data having Moreno sitting at 51.1 percent while Brown is at 48.9 percent. That’s a pretty consistent 2 percent-plus lead for the Republican challenger with just under five weeks until election day.
     […]
     Seeing their chances of retaining Senate control dwindling, the DSCC decided to focus on the races in Texas and Florida, where Republican incumbents Ted Cruz and Rick Scott are up for reelection. This could well be a Hail Mary pass from Democrats, who are desperate to keep Chuck Schumer as majority leader.

     But a one or two-seat Republican margin in the Senate isn’t worth much, for several reasons:

• That slender a margin tempts “weak” (i.e., center or center-left) Republicans to defect to the Democrats, just as Jim Jeffords and Arlen Specter did. Alternately, they can use the slenderness of the margin to bolster their negotiating power within the GOP caucus.
• The filibuster remains an important impediment to a legislative agenda – and the Democrats will not fail to use it should an important Republican initiative threaten a Democrat priority.
• The 2017 – 2020 Senate, nominally a majority-Republican body, seldom cooperated with President Trump. Given Mitch McConnell’s likely continuation as Republican Senate leader, that would likely be the case in a second Trump term.

     The Trump Administration is likely once more to face an uphill struggle in which its nominal partisans are as important an obstruction as the Democrat caucus. Ironically, were the GOP to command a 60-vote Senate majority, some of the same considerations would apply.