[sodapopcan]

I was going to bring this up but was wary of getting too deep into a political hole when I'm not super on US politics (although in the past year and a bit I've been paying way more attention). Mostly, I have no idea what the Republican party will look like post-Trump or how any of that works and it's not clear to me what kind of influence they will have as the opposition next term. The current term has made the democrats look extremely weak.

Although, again, my over understanding of your political system is poor and I just relate it to the one in my country where they hold parliament and hurl schoolyard insults at each other.

[sanderjd]

What I would say is that to me the "Democrats look weak" thing is pretty silly. By design, if one party holds the presidency and both houses of Congress at once, they get to enact their preferred agenda (as long as it is deemed constitutional by the current judiciary, which is also controlled by that same party at this moment). So, like, by design Democrats are powerless at this moment. They aren't "weak", they are out of power, by dint of the design of the system and the desire of the voters. So if the current government administration and policy is bad (which, in my view, it certainly is), the blame lies entirely with the people in power. It's not because the Democrats aren't "fighting" enough. I think that's nonsense, they genuinely have no power.

[sodapopcan]

Ok ya that makes sense, and makes sense why I get confused. That sort of thing can still happen here, though we can minority and majority governments, and I generally prefer when it's minority, even if my "preferred party I still don't really like" has power.

[sanderjd]

Yeah in our system, those kinds of governments happen when there is a split in Congress (one party has a majority in the House, the other in the Senate) and/or when Congress and the presidency are held by opposite parties. And this is actually more the usual setup! For instance, it was that way until last January, and it's very likely that it will be that way again this coming January. But it just happens that at the moment, and since the beginning of the current presidential administration, there has been totally unified government in which the Democrats have no power whatsoever.

To me, the thing that was "weak" was losing all those elections in the last cycle. But it's not "weak" to be unable to do anything with no power.