On November 6th, millions of American citizens will vote to decide what path our country will take into the future. This will also be the first time that Americans nationwide will have the chance to pass judgment on the actions of our Republican legislature and president. I am a centrist-minded individual who rejects the partisan nature of both the Democratic and Republican parties while supporting bipartisan compromises and market-based solutions. Even so, I think it is critical to the stability of the nation that the Democrats win control of Congress this midterm election.

In the past year, we have seen successive infringements on the values and norms that make the United States the great democracy that it is. The Trump administration has violated the rule of law by publicly discrediting and attacking agencies like the FBI and the Justice Department in order to protect allies who are under investigation. He has demanded oaths of loyalty from high-ranking officials such as James Comey, Jeff Sessions, and H.R. McMaster, and sought to use the power of federal prosecution to execute a partisan agenda against his enemies. All the while, the Republican Congress has aided and abetted this gross misconduct, secretly coordinating with the White House to strangle independent investigations, as in the case of Representative Devin Nunes and his “secret memo.”

Under the Obama administration, the Republican Party argued that there was a “crisis of moral corruption” in government. Today, that same crisis has completely overtaken the executive branch, and department heads have been taking advantage of their positions to solicit numerous financial favors, special treatment for their families. Even the president himself is suspected of wielding foreign policy power to advance his own business interests. Yet, here again, the Republican Congress is completely abandoning its duty to exact proper oversight.

Congress is not only failing to do its job on domestic issues but international ones as well. Around the world, from Poland to the Philippines and Venezuela to Turkey, liberal democracy is under attack. Freedom of the press, impartial judiciaries, fair elections, and restrictions on the power of the executive are all being dismantled one by one, and, at this critical moment for democracy, the U.S. is watching from afar like a bystander.

President Trump’s public capitulation to dictator Vladimir Putin in front of the world in Helsinki earlier this year was, in my view, one of the most disgraceful moments in presidential history, and it is instances like these that are causing the liberal world order we so desperately need to slowly slip away from us.

For fear of the Republican base turning on them, most Republican Senators and Representatives have capitulated to the wishes of the executive, abandoning Congress’s most important role: checking the power of the President. By contrast, a Democratic legislature will be sure to launch serious investigations into the corruption of the administration, take actions to protect the fairness of the vote, and restore relations with our key allies.

Even more importantly than all of this, though, is that Democrats being in power will force Republicans to compromise once more with the opposition on matters such as health care, tax reform, and tariffs. After two years of partisan fights over such matters, the country is in desperate need for some bipartisanship, and only a divided government can promise that.

What we need from Congress right now is not a strategy of passive appeasement but one of critical oversight, and at times, unyielding confrontation. We need a Congress that will blunt the worst impulses of corrupt cabinet members, properly regulate the executive departments, and keep the president in check as the Constitution empowered it to do. We need a Congress that will strengthen our ties with our democratic partners, promote collective diplomacy to the international community, and restore order and sanity to American politics.

This is a strategy that, for now, the Republican Party simply cannot and is unwilling to offer. For that, we need a Democratic Congress come November 6th. Our nation depends on it.

This piece also appears in our October 2018 print edition.