The policies of defeated one-term presidents are not as easily reversed as their victorious successors, suffused with campaign rhetoric, sometimes suppose they will be. Even when, as now, the winning party has majorities in both houses of Congress.
Those margins, after Democrats’ wins in the U.S. Senate races in Georgia Tuesday, are tenuous, 51-50 in the Senate, 222-211 in the House. They’re eerily similar to Republicans’ margins when George W. Bush became president 20 years ago, 51-50 in the Senate, 221-212 in the House.
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Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner.
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