When we look back at the campaign between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, whatever the outcome may be, it will become retrospectively clear that the entire debate rested on false premises. Americans think they are choosing between Harris’s policy vision and Trump’s. The media has demanded, with varying levels of success, that both candidates specify their programs, But the truth is that only one of those stands a chance of enactment: Trump’s.
There are only two realistic alternatives: divided government, or unified Republican control under Donald Trump.
New Senate polling by the New York Times drives a stake into Democratic hopes of retaining the Senate. The party’s current 51st seat, held by Joe Manchin, will turn Republican next year. The 50th seat, occupied by Jon Tester in heavily Republican Montana, also seems to be gone. (Tester has been losing ground all year, and currently trails by eight points.) In theory, Democrats could hold 50 seats and break ties by sweeping every other contested race and deposing either Rick Scott in Florida or Ted Cruz in Texas. But the Times finds Cruz ahead by four, and Scott winning by nine. It is possible Cruz will be upset, but the chances that occurs and Democrats hold on in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — all of which appear closer than Texas — are remote at best, and fantastical at worst.
The race for House control remains a toss-up. It is possible that Trump would have to contend with divided government. But it is almost certain Harris would do so. That means that her legislative ambitions are largely dead on arrival, except to the extent that they either enjoy Republican support, or can be traded for Republican priorities.
The nature of a Harris presidency is certainly interesting and worthy of probing. But the mainstream media treatment of her agenda has had a blank-slate assumption that’s at odds with the reality. Harris is not going to be enacting new social programs, and her latitude in confirming judges and even picking a cabinet will be tightly constrained. There hasn’t been a new president since 1989 who assumed office without the benefit of full party control of Congress.
The media has been obsessed over whether the “real” Harris is the one who adopted a series of left-wing positions, or the more moderate candidate of 2024. It’s all academic. Even Harris’s quite moderate profile in 2024 is well to the left of what she can realistically accomplish.
Trump is a different story. Trump’s legislative agenda is deliberately ambiguous, allowing him to pose to various audiences as either right wing or moderate. His main consistent legislative priority is to extend the Trump tax cuts. Republicans in Congress share that goal, and if they enjoy full control of government, there is little doubt they will achieve it. The real question is whether they would take advantage of a rare chance to implement their program, perhaps spurred on by economic and fiscal conditions, to implement deep cuts to the welfare state.
But the two most important priorities to Trump personally are not the tax cuts. They are a broad-based tariff, which he has touted incessantly as an economic elixir, and using the power of government to punish political opponents and independent media.
Trump’s tariff does not require Congress. He can enact it as a national-security measure. Since the definition of what qualifies as national security is defined by the president himself, this means in practice that he can enact tariffs that he intends as an economic and fiscal strategy on “national security” grounds even without congressional approval.
The tariff would have profound implications on the shape of the American economy, price levels, and the distribution of income (it would function as a huge regressive tax, partly clearing fiscal headroom for cuts in taxes on the rich, which would make it more palatable to Republicans). It would also give Trump far-reaching powers to hand out exceptions to favored firms. A broad-based tariff would raise prices of nearly everything, including inputs to goods manufactured in the United States. During his first term, Trump carved out numerous exceptions, and the market for seeking these exceptions created a lobbying boom for Trump-friendly operators.
The upshot of this policy would be a massive politicization of the entire economy. The ability to curry favor with Trump and secure a precious tariff exception would become a decisive economic advantage for any company. The system would resemble Hungary or Russia, countries Trump admires, where the business class understands that sucking up to the ruling party is necessary to stay in business.
Likewise Trump’s plan to turn the federal government into a partisan cudgel. His actions during his first term, when he consistently demanded the Justice Department act like his personal attorney, and received partial compliance, have gotten ample coverage. A second Trump term would almost certainly go farther.
Over the last eight years, the Republican Party has grown steadily more submissive to Trump. While some key Republicans stood up to him during his first term, they did so in the expectation he would be defeated, exiled, and the party would return to normal. Republicans who defied Trump didn’t generally realize at the time they were signing their political death warrants. The supply of Republicans both able to gain powerful positions under Trump, and willing to sacrifice their careers to prevent his abuses, has shrunk dramatically since 2020.
The party is mainly divided between Republicans who gleefully celebrate his desire to exact revenge on his foes and those who pretend it isn’t his intention. The latter was on display in a recent Fox News performance in which Laura Ingraham kept trying to prod Trump to forego revenge during a second term, only for him to refuse even the pretense of fairness:
The Senate would have some leverage over the shape of a Trump cabinet. (The House, which Democrats have a chance to control, has no role in confirmations.) But the Republican Senate is unlikely to have much impact on Trump’s decisions. Trump has proven himself repeatedly willing to harm his own party in order to maximize his control over it. The cost of this tradeoff is that Republicans have frequently lost winnable races because they have put forward a Trump stooge instead of a standard, more independent candidate.
But the other side of this calculation is that, if Trump wins anyway and has a Senate majority, he will exercise decisive control over it. Trump can end the career of almost any Republican who defies him. How many Republicans will volunteer to terminate their careers for the sake of blocking, say, Mike Davis from the Justice Department? Or Rick Grenell from the State Department?
To me, the choice between the the blue-sky governing vision of Harris and Trump is a very easy one. But that is not the choice voters have. The options on the table in all practicality are Harris governing in conjunction with Republicans, or Trump implementing his unfettered vision of American Orbanism.
