This article in Politico poses a very interesting question: could Democrats get a majority in the Senate this year, and not in 2019 after the next congressional election?
Apparently John McCain was considering switching to the Democrats in 2001, after Republicans screwed him over in the 2000 primary. After his vote against the Republicans' health care bill and his speech about bipartisanship, people are wondering whether McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski might leave the dumpster fire that the Republican Party has become under Donald Trump.
It seems unlikely that they would actually join the Democratic Party. Instead, they might become independents, like Bernie Sanders, and caucus with the Democrats. They could call themselves "Independent Republicans," which is what Republicans in Minnesota started calling themselves in 1975, after Nixon trashed the Republican Party's name.
McCain, Collins and Murkowski could quite legitimately claim that they are not leaving the Republican Party, but that Trump staged a hostile takeover and has been threatening and holding the Senate hostage to his ever-changing whims.
Trump has tried to blackmail several Republicans in the Senate who object to his misogyny and bullying rants, including Jeff Flake and Dean Heller. They are Mormons, like Mitt Romney, and many Republicans have never liked Trump's immorality, mendacity and mockery of religion.
The so-called president claims that his coat tails are what gave the Republicans the last election, but that is -- like so many things that spew from Trump's contorted lips -- a lie. Republicans lost seats in both the Senate and the House in 2016, because of Trump. Additionally, among the Republicans who voted no against various versions of this year's health care repeal efforts, all but two received more votes than Trump. Which means the approval ratings of those congressmen would go up even more if if they turned against Trump.
Because he's president, Trump thinks he holds all the cards. He thinks the president is a king, answerable to no one. But he can be removed by the vice president and a simple majority of his own cabinet. Had Trump ever served as CEO of a public corporation with a board he would understand this: but he's always headed up private companies, answerable to no one except his own vanity and greed. He thinks he can lead with bluster and intimidation, while betraying his own people every step of the way.
Stupidly, Trump has spent the last six months making the lives of at least three cabinet members a living hell: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Health Secretary Tom Price. The rest of the cabinet have surely taken notice: does Trump even know that the 25th Amendment allows the cabinet to dump him?
Trump has shown a complete lack of loyalty to the people and the Party that supported him and got him where he is today. Since Trump appointed them, it seems unlikely the cabinet would sack him.
But it's not so far-fetched that three to five moderate Republican senators and 20 to 30 moderate Republican representatives would form a new Independent Republican caucus that aligns with the Democrats to oust Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, putting a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats in the leadership of both houses of Congress.
If John McCain was truly serious about going forward in a bipartisan fashion on health care legislation, it is clearly impossible with the power-hungry Mitch McConnell as leader of the Senate.
McCain would be another Abraham Lincoln if he could lead Republicans and Democrats on a bipartisan path out of the mess that Trump and the cowards of the Republican Party have led us into.
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