Congratulations Republicans, you have a near record majority in the house, and what appears will be 54 seats in the senate (three races were still undecided at this writing. At least one is a near certain Republican victory, one appears likely so, and one is likely a democrat Victory).
Some folks have been saying things like "Well, yeah, Obama's gonna veto everything... but hey at least we'll have a veto proof majority on some things, that a lot of Democrats support".
Don't count on it.
Minority Democratic support for some "Republican issues" was allowed before, because it didn't matter. There was no consequence to it.
I can almost guarantee you, there will not be one single override. No Democrat will be allowed by the leadership to be counted publicly supporting Republicans, against president Obama and the rest of the democratic party... at least not if an override would be successful.
Now, it's an entirely different situation. A Democratic defection will be both a PR and a political disaster. It will hurt and weaken the Democrats even more than this election already has, and crash morale even more than it already has.
Unless a Democrat will lose his seat if he doesn't vote to override a specific veto, it will NOT happen. In that case the leadership MIGHT let them vote for an override, maybe, if there is no chance of an override passing.
If the situation is dire enough, a Dem congresscritter might actually defect without clearance... but that would have to be something pretty dire, because there is just about ZERO chance any Dem who did that would ever be forgiven if the override succeeded. They'd have to switch parties.
Of course, if there's no chance of the override succeeding, most likely there won't even be an override vote (and if there really were such a chance, then Obama wouldn't veto, unless it were something the Dems absolutely could not stand for... in which case, again, there's no way it would get enough Dem support to be overridden).
Even if there is however... Do you really think there will be 12 (presuming the total is 54 as it appears it will be) senators who will lose their seats if they don't override, on any specific issue? There are quite possibly 12 Democrats total who might lose their seats if they didn't override on issues that were very important to their state... but 12 on a single issue?
Of course, they could also put doing the right thing, for the good of their state and the nation, above politics...
... Oh... sorry... can't stop laughing at that thought right now...
