"... refashioning the country’s social safety net, wiping out scores of labor and environmental regulations and unraveling some of the most significant policy prescriptions put forward by the Obama administration...."
But as Republicans plan to reserve the first 100 days of Congress for their more partisan goals, Democrats are preparing roadblocks. The party’s brutal election-year wounds have been salted by evidence of Russian election interference, Mr. Trump’s hard-line cabinet picks and his taunting Twitter posts. (On Saturday, he offered New Year’s wishes “to all,” including “those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do.”)
So... they
do know what to do? The idea is to put up "roadblocks."
The Senate may be narrowly divided, but among the 48 senators in the Democratic caucus* are 10 who will stand for re-election in two years in states that voted for Mr. Trump. Republicans are counting on their support, at least some of the time.
But on many issues, Senate Democrats — including their new leader, Chuck Schumer of New York — are expected to pivot from postelection carping to active thwarting, using complex Senate procedures and political messaging to slow or perhaps block elements of Mr. Trump’s agenda.
You know the stages of grief: 1. Denial, 2. Carping, 3. Thwarting....
ADDED: Here's a chart showing all those Democratic Senators who must run in 2018. I grabbed that at Wikipedia's
"United States Senate elections, 2018":
You can see that the right-hand column needs to be updated to show the actual results of the 2016 election. There are 12 seats held by Democrats, and the chart anticipates that all 12 will go Democratic in the 2016 election, but in real life, 10 of those 12 went for Trump. One of the 2 seats occupied by Republicans did go for Clinton in 2016 (Nevada). Still, that's a harsh picture for the Democrats in the Senate.
I'm especially interested in the Wisconsin race. Tammy Baldwin was elected in 2012, when Obama was on the ticket. Obama got 52.83% here, and Baldwin got 51.4%.
Here's a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article about Republicans gearing up to challenge Baldwin. One of them is Eric Hovde, who came very close to being the GOP nominee in 2012, but got edged out by the former governor, Tommy Thompson, who went on to run a terrible, lackluster campaign. Another is Congressman Sean Duffy, who was an early supporter of Trump's and who shares Trump's background in the reality-TV business.
Duffy was on "The Real World" in the 1997 season (Boston) and he's married to Rachel Campos-Duffy, who was on "The Real World" in 1994 (the best-ever season, San Francisco). Those 2 have 8 children together.
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* There are 46 Democratic Senators, plus 2 Democrats who are in the Democratic caucus. You see the name of one of them on the chart above,
Angus King. The other one is the one who challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination when everybody actually in her party obeyed orders and stood down.
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