Switching Parties

2003-2022 | 19 years

This episode has a much different tone than other episodes of The West Wing, with the episode ending with Josh walking into his surprise birthday party, stricken, because he has to tell the President that he lost Senator Carrick, who is leaving the Democratic Party.

Given that there are 100 senators, and 435 members of the House of Representatives, it is easy to think that one congressperson changing parties wouldn’t matter. However, Josh points out the range of problems it can cause if someone switches parties when he says, “We can't win back the Senate without Idaho. We can't pass the tax bill, the new stimulus package”. Political parties seem so different that it is hard to imagine someone could simply move from one party to another. However, this has happened numerous times before, 16 times since 1900, including in 2001, 2 years before the episode came out, when Senator Jim Jeffords switched from Republican to Independent, flipping control of the Senate to the Democrats.

The 117th Senate is in what is currently a 50-50 split, with 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and 2 Independents that caucus with Democrats, and there is a razor-thin control over the Senate for Democrats, making it so that someone switching parties could have the power to shift control of congress from one party to another. Because of this, we see those who are close to the center, specifically Senator Joe Manchin, having a lot of power. This can be seen in the fact that he got much of what he wanted in the Inflation Reduction Act, including a commitment outside of the bill for a natural gas pipeline in his state of West Virginia. It seems odd that the Democrats, who technically control Congress along with The White House, would change a bill so much to let one Seanotor get what he wants, especially given that he often votes with the Republicans. However, every Republican was voting against it, so to get the vote to a tie, which Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris could break, every single Democrat would have to vote for the bill. Also, Democrats have to walk a fine line when dealing with Senator Manchin, because they don’t want to make a mistake like Josh did in the episode, causing them to lose control of the Senate, either because he switches parties or he isn’t re-elected, both of which would cause them to lose his vote.

Something else that is interesting with the idea of switching parties is that Congresswomen Liz Cheney, who was on the January 6th committee, recently said when talking about former President Trump, “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he is not the nominee. And if he is the nominee, I won’t be a Republican”. The fact that she would leave the party is shocking given that she is basically Republican royalty, with her Dad serving as Vice President to George Bush. According to CNN, she also said that to make sure that Republicans who promote lies don’t get elected she would campaign for Democrats. Congresswoman Cheney lost her re-election campaign in the Republican primary, and she still hasn’t declared whether or not she will be running for President in 2024.

Senator Manchin has gained power because he often sides with republicans on issues, keeping the Democrats from carrying out their legislative agenda, meanwhile, Congresswoman Cheney, who almost always voted with Republicans, went against her party platform on the one issue of January 6th, and lost her seat because of it.