If the US presidential election were held today – a week before Election Day – Donald Trump would run the election again White House and the Republicans would gain control of the US Senatewhile the photo in the House of Representatives is more difficult to predict.
These were among the perspectives shared by John Boehner, the former Ohio congressman and speaker of the House of Representatives who left office at the end of 2015, less than a year before Trump won the 2016 election.
Current political climate
Boehner spoke on stage Tuesday at the Association of Mortgage Bankers (MBA)’s annual convention and expo in Denver. He was joined by MBA President and CEO Bob Broeksmit to talk about his decades of experience in Washington, DC, and the dynamics unfolding in the run-up to the election.
Boehner was critical of the tenor of modern national politics, especially in his old stomping grounds in the House of Representatives. After working in his family’s tavern at a young age, he said one skill he learned was “to disagree without being disagreeable.” That trait, he said, isn’t seen as often these days.
When Broeksmit asked him about the dynamics on the Republican side, Boehner said he’s having a “tough time recognizing the Republican Party he served.” He criticized Trump for “hijacking” the party, but he also attributed the deep divisions in the political system to one of its key features: representation.
“We shouldn’t be surprised that Congress is so divided because their voters are so divided,” he said. “They reflect their views and hold their members of Congress hostage to their right-wing or left-wing politics. It’s disgusting, I’m just telling it like it is.”
Composition of Congress
When Broeksmit asked Boehner to make his election predictions, Boehner was quick in his assessment of the Senate.
‘Let’s do the easy one first. Republicans are going to win the Senate,” he said. “The question now is: do they have 51 votes or 52? If they really have a good night, they get 53 votes. But if you don’t have 60 votes in the Senate, you have nothing but the budget and a process called reconciliation, which only requires 50 votes on each side.”
But proposals that go beyond revenue and expenditure will be more difficult to pass with such a slim majority, he said.
Although Boehner does not expect a clear winner in the House of Representatives anyway, he does foresee a majority as small as today’s, regardless of who actually takes power. This will keep the chances of consensus on many issues low.
The presidential race
As he transitioned into the presidential race, Boehner took a moment to take a few jabs at both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“We have 330 million Americans and we’re down to two,” he said. “Real?”
He recalled feeling the same way in both 2016 and 2020, but ultimately felt like the tailwind was working in Trump’s favor. He attributed some of his thinking to polls that underestimated Trump’s final election results in both of his previous races. At this point in 2020, Joe Biden had a larger lead in the polls than Harris does now, and that race largely resulted in a dead heat, Boehner said.
“Unless the pollsters realize this, which I don’t think they will, Donald Trump has a bigger lead than what would appear today,” he said. He also mentioned the “nervousness” of his Democratic friends, and what he perceived as Harris’ own problems answering questions in interviews.
But he also qualified by saying it was still possible that Trump would lose, because the deciding factor is often about motivating voters to go to the polls. Harris needs younger people and women to vote, which is a harder hill to climb since older Americans are generally more likely to vote.
Broeksmit added that during a recent meeting with the founder of a political news and polling outfit, it was posited that the most important issue of the day has defined every presidential election since World War II — and that issue is usually the economy. Boehner agreed.
“It’s always about your wallet and the economy,” he said. “People vote out of self-interest.”
