With the closely watched presidential race still up in the air the morning after the election, as vote-counting continued despite the efforts of President Donald Trump to get the courts to stop it, the Democratic Party’s hopes of wresting control of the US Senate from the GOP had dwindled dramatically, potentially imperiling the hopes of ambitious progressive legislation when Joe Biden takes over the White House.
While Republicans have yet to officially cement their hold on the Senate — an institution the GOP has successfully used to ram through right-wing judicial nominees and kill stacks of legislation approved by House Democrats — results emerging from key states indicate that Democratic challengers, who needed a net gain of at least three seats, fell short of toppling enough vulnerable Republicans, including Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), to win the chamber.
As the Washington Post summarized Nov. 4, “Republicans defeated well-funded Democratic challengers in South Carolina, Iowa, and Montana while seizing a lead in the key battleground of North Carolina. Democrats defeated Republican Sens. Cory Gardner in Colorado and Martha McSally in Arizona, although the GOP picked up a seat of its own in Alabama and appeared to diminish the prospects of a Democratic majority as results continued to roll in.” Democrats needed a net gain of four seats to win the Senate outright, or three if Biden wins the presidency — a scenario that would make Vice President Kamala Harris the tie-breaker.
Sen. Collins was declared the winner in Maine with 50.5% of the vote, as Sara Gideon conceded the race the day after the election. In North Carolina, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) carried a lead of less than 100,000 votes over Democratic opponent Cal Cunningham out of 5.43 million votes reported in the election, but ballots may still show up in the mail until Nov. 12.
Democrats also had two pickup opportunities in Georgia, where Jon Ossoff challenged Sen. David Perdue (R), who led by 148,000 votes the afternoon after the election, but they will face a runoff Jan. 5 as mail-in ballots put Perdue below 50%. In a special election, Raphael Warnock (D) led interim Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R) by 290,000 votes, 32.3% of the total in a 20-person race, putting Warnock and Loeffler in a Jan. 5 runoff.
The consequences of a Biden presidency with an intransigent Republican-controlled Senate, headed by newly re-elected Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)—the self-proclaimed legislative “grim reaper”—could be immense, given the desperate need to pass legislation confronting the ongoing coronavirus and economic collapse as well as sweeping measures to combat the climate emergency. Biden’s proposed $2.2 trillion green energy plan, for instance, would appear doomed in a GOP Senate.
A Republican-controlled Senate could also wreak havoc on a Biden White House’s ability to fill key cabinet positions and confirm judicial nominees to federal courts that Trump and McConnell have relentlessly stuffed with right-wing judges.
Stephen Wolf of Daily Kos Elections warned Nov. 4 that although Biden won the Electoral College, Democrats “are on track to not take the Senate, despite getting more votes nationally, just like the last several cycles.”
“GOP minority rule is our reality,” said Wolf. “Joe Biden could be elected president, but without the Senate, there’s a massive risk that he becomes a failed president unable to appoint any judges or enact any progressive policies ... What’s left of our democracy is hanging on by a thread and is giving way to self-entrenching GOP minority rule up and down the ballot.”
Robert Kuttner noted at The American Prospect (prospect.org) that Republicans keeping control of the Senate will mean Biden will have to govern as a more centrist president. “It will take some doing for him to get a Cabinet confirmed,” he wrote.
“The most important players will be the three Republican Senate moderates: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, and Susan Collins of Maine. Biden will need to reach out to them and see if they will occasionally break Republican caucus discipline and vote to pass crucial legislation and confirm nominees.
“Something similar occurred in 2009 when President Obama found three Republican senators to help him pass the Recovery Act — Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania), Olympia Snowe (Maine), and, yes, Susan Collins. Their price was a much weaker act that redirected hundreds of billions from public investment to tax cuts.
“Thus the danger. To get nominees confirmed, Biden would need to shop them first to McConnell and then to the three moderates. That means his Cabinet will be even more centrist than it already was going to be. And forget Rooseveltian legislation in the first two years.
“One ray of hope: There is a very vulnerable class of GOP senators up in 2022. But in the meantime, Biden has to deliver something to an anxious electorate.”
Republican senators Democrats might target in 2022 include Marco Rubio in Florida, Chuck Grassley in Iowa, Richard Burr in North Carolina, Rob Portman in Ohio, an open seat Pat Toomey is giving up in Pennsylvania and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.
Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Follow him on Twitter: @johnsonjakep. Jim Cullen contributed to this story.
From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2020
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