To understand what the midterms mean, you first need a basic understanding of how the US federal government works. In an effort to be brief here, I am going to gloss over many details.

The federal government is comprised of three branches: Judicial (the supreme court), Executive (the president), and Legislative (congress).

The Legislative branch is bicameral; it has two entities: the Senate and the House of Representatives (commonly referred to as “the House"). The Senate has two senators per state, for a total of 100. The House has a number of representatives per state, roughly based on the state’s population, for a total of 435 voting members.

In order for anything to have approval from the Legislative branch, approval from both houses is usually required.

Through a system of checks and balances, cooperation/approval from two of three branches is usually required to get anything done. Before the midterms, the Good Ole Pedophiles (GOP) controlled all three branches.

Following the midterms, the Democrats now have a strong majority in both houses of the Legislative branch. In trump’s first term, the Democrats had a slim majority in both houses, but a few Democrats in both houses were…. convinced…. to vote along Republican lines. With this wider majority, that’s now less likely.

However, the Republicans still have a lame duck determined to seize as much power as possible, a super majority in the supreme court who have already ruled the president is immune from prosecution, a wide majority of judges in the federal court system, and many loyalists is smaller government agencies, regulatory bodies, and lower levels of government.

So, while the Republicans no longer have control of all levers of government, the Democrats don’t control enough to get anything meaningful done. They do now have the power to stop, or at least greatly delay, a lot more than they did before.

Impeachment may again be on the table, but I’m not holding my breath.