Is Trump a Lame Duck? What the Term Really Means

Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate on Nov. 3, and within a day one phrase was everywhere: lame duck. The label is meant to suggest that President Trump's power evaporated on election night. It did not. Here is what the term actually means, where it came from, and what history says a president can still do with two years left and an opposition Congress.

What is a lame duck president?

In the narrow sense, a lame duck is an officeholder whose successor has already been elected, serving out the weeks before handing over power. In the broader sense the press uses today, it means any president who cannot run again, especially in his final two years.

Under the 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, no one can be elected president more than twice. That makes every second-term president a lame duck in the broad sense from his first day of term two. The label tends to come out in earnest after the midterm elections, when the president's party loses ground in Congress.

Where does the term "lame duck" come from?

The phrase was born in 18th-century London, at the stock exchange. A "lame duck" was a broker who could not pay his debts and "waddled" out of the market. By the mid-1800s, Americans had borrowed it for politicians on their way out of office.

The Constitution even has a "Lame Duck Amendment." The 20th Amendment, ratified in 1933, moved the start of a new Congress to January 3 and the presidential inauguration from March 4 to January 20, shrinking the months when defeated officials still held power. It is why the new Democratic majorities take their seats when the next Congress convenes in January 2027.

What can a lame duck president still do?

Quite a lot. Losing Congress shifts a president's tools; it does not take them away.

• The veto. A bill the president refuses to sign dies unless two-thirds of both the House and Senate vote to override. Democrats' new majorities are nowhere near two-thirds.
• Executive action. Executive orders, agency rules and enforcement priorities do not require a vote in Congress.
• Foreign policy and command of the military. The president remains commander in chief and the nation's chief diplomat.
• Pardons. The pardon power is the president's alone.
• Setting the agenda. No member of Congress commands the attention a president does.

What he loses is real, too. A Democratic Senate can stall or reject Cabinet and judicial nominees, and House committees gain subpoena power. Legislation Republicans wanted, such as the SAVE America Act, has no path in this Congress. Pretending otherwise would be spin of a different kind.

What history says about lame-duck presidents

If divided government meant the end of a presidency, America has had five failed presidencies in a row. Every two-term president since World War II, from Dwight Eisenhower through Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, spent his final two years facing a Congress controlled entirely by the other party. Trump now joins that list.

Several of them did some of their most consequential work in that stretch:

• Reagan lost the Senate in 1986. In December 1987 he signed the INF Treaty with Mikhail Gorbachev, eliminating an entire class of nuclear missiles.
• Bush lost both chambers in 2006. In January 2007 he ordered the troop surge in Iraq over the objections of the new Democratic majority.
• Obama lost the Senate in 2014. In 2015 he concluded the Iran nuclear deal and committed the U.S. to the Paris climate agreement, without a Senate vote on either.

You do not have to like any of those decisions to see the pattern. "Lame duck" describes the calendar, not the president's power. The tools change from passing laws to vetoes, executive action and foreign policy, and a president willing to use them stays at the center of Washington.

So is Trump a lame duck?

Technically, yes, in the broad sense: he is term-limited and facing a Congress run by the other party. But the term does real work for his opponents, because it implies the next two years are already decided. They are not. Democrats can investigate. They cannot pass anything the president will not sign, and they cannot override his veto.

That is the same position Reagan, Bush and Obama were in, and none of them spent their last two years idle. For more on what a Democratic Congress can and cannot do, read why the president's veto still matters. For the accountability Republicans owe their own voters after these losses, see Show Us The Vote.