Democrats will face demands for results if they expand power in Congress, says Brit Hume

If Democrats take control of both Houses of Congress, or even just one of them, they will be held accountable for concrete results, and not just for opposing President Donald Trump. The assessment was made by Brit Hume, Fox News' main political analyst, in a comment shown on the Fox Business channel on the night of the count.

According to Hume, the size of the voting margins caught his attention. He stated that the party will have much more spotlight on it than during the period in which it was in the minority. In the analyst's assessment, the Chamber of Deputies is one of the worst places in the world to be, precisely because it exposes who governs.

From opposition to the proposal

Hume recalled that Democrats campaigned based on opposition to Trump and the war. For him, this will not last indefinitely, especially because the president, in the analyst's words, will be a lame duck, with only two more years in office. The question voters will ask, according to him, is what the Democrats have to offer.

The analyst believes that the answer will come from a coalition. In his reading, a group of elected democratic socialists will try to pull the party to the left, while others will defend the attempt to approve some concrete measures. Hume said he doesn't know how far this second current will go.

The reason for the doubt, according to him, is the intensity of the aversion to Trump among a portion of the electorate, which he classified as very strong and lasting. Even with the president at the end of his term, Democrats may feel the need to oppose him on everything. Hume cited the question asked during the program about the existence of measures that the party could adopt and that Trump would sanction, giving the president some achievement. The response, he said, will be watched with interest.

Temporary power

The analyst also left a warning for the party: the delegation of authority at the polls is temporary, something that, according to him, the president sometimes forgets. Hume recalled the phrase attributed to George W. Bush, that he did not obtain 50% of the votes, but 100% of the presidency. For him, the phrase is technically correct, but it can lead governments to ambitious agendas based on claims of overwhelming victories.

On that point, Hume said Trump claimed a landslide victory in the last election. According to the analyst, the state-by-state dispute was tight everywhere, and the significant result occurred in the Electoral College, due to the structure of the system. His message to Democrats was to be wary of the power they have been given.

For investors, the comment points to a scenario of a more divided Congress and greater friction with the White House, which tends to weigh on the predictability of fiscal and tax agendas in Washington. The transcription, however, does not contain market projections, and Hume's reading is a political analysis, not a prediction about the stock market, interest rates or the dollar.

Automatically translated from Portuguese.