Historically, when the President and at least one house of Congress are opposing parties, the federal government tends to be gridlocked except in time of national emergency (e.g., 9/11).
This, I believe, is why the markets are reacting rather optimistically to the election results. Market makers clearly believe that a Biden presidency and a Republican Senate will get very little done, pass very few new laws, and spend a lot of time quarreling. This allows the economy to essentially run on auto-pilot, which in a free market system is rather conducive to growth.
If however the Senate swings to the Democrats after all the votes are counted, it may be a different story.
> Historically, when the President and at least one house of Congress are opposing parties, the federal government tends to be gridlocked except in time of national emergency (e.g., 9/11).
Unless you mean in the strict technical sense of national emergency, where the US has spent exactly 14 months not in one since March 9, 1933 (so the rule is moot because it basically never applies), historically that's mostly not true; it wasn't that true in the 1980s through 1992s with Democrats controlling one and sometimes two houses of Congress and Reagan-Bush presidencies. It wasn't very true in the mid-late 1990s with Clinton vs. Gingrich (there were shutdowns, but also major bipartisan initiatives like welfare reform).
Still, it's pretty true if you narrow it to a Democratic President and Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority leader, rather than trying to make it some nonpartisan broad historical phenomenon.
Clinton was a pragmatist; he shifted to a more moderate position after 1994 and the huge GOP sweep of the House. Thus he and Gingrich were able to work together and get some great work done.
Maybe, more significant was that he was ideologically a center-right neoliberal, the same as the dominant faction of the Republican Party at the time he was elected.(but not the same as the right turn the Republican Party took in response.)
> he shifted to a more moderate position after 1994
Not really. Overall policy outcome shifted from what a center-right neoliberal with weakly progressive stands on social issues could agree with a Democratic Congress that was to his left on both economic and social issues on to what athe same President could agree with with a Congress that was slightly to his right on economic issues and far to his right on social issues.
Welfare reform, for instance, may have passed after Republicans took office, but it wasn't Clinton “shifting to a more moderate position”, as it was a major part (though not as significant as health care, on which he was defeated by Democratic defections before Republicans took control) of his 1992 platform.
But the point is, in either case, while you can find excuses for each of the exceptions to the supposed “divided government is normally total gridlock outside of unusual emergencies” idea, the history of divided government has far more exceptions than cases which support the rule.
