Democrats may have reclaimed control of the Senate with two victories in Georgia but their majority is slim and will herald an era where every senator wields an inordinate amount of power over the vital upper chamber.
In other words, every senator will be the deciding vote in a situation that has happened only a few other times in the chamber’s history and is likely to prove a tricky challenge for the incoming president, Joe Biden – albeit one preferable to dealing with continued Republican control.
That dynamic is a shift from recent years in which control of the chamber has been more concretely with Republicans or Democrats. But the addition of the incoming senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia means that the Senate will be split evenly 50-50, a divide that’s happened only three times in American history.
Democrats control the chamber only through Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris who will act as the tie-breaking vote when she is sworn in on 20 January. Her replacement in her California senate seat, Alex Padilla, will join the chamber quickly after that so Democratic control starts on 21 January.
The split means any senator can gum up legislation making its way through the chamber by withholding a vote, possibly until other tweaks have been made.
“It only takes one senator to object and that doesn’t mean that you’re going to have the power to ultimately stop something, but being in control of how much time something takes gives you enormous power,” said Joe Britton, a former Senate Democratic chief of staff. “Especially at 1pm on a Thursday afternoon.”
For Democrats, that’s the best outcome after disappointing results in a handful of Senate races they had thought they would win in the November elections. It means, though, that two separate groups of Republican and Democratic “moderates” are likely to command significant attention.
Looming over the chamber’s business will be elections in 2022 in which two senators, Mark Kelly of Arizona and Raphael Warnock of Georgia are up for re-election after just two years as they are completing their predecessors’ term. Because they will have to run in conservative-leaning states early in their Senate careers they are likely to steer clear of supporting very liberal legislation making its way through the chamber. Both are expected to fall among the more moderate wing of the party alongside Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
If any senator gained influence from the even Senate split it’s Manchin, the most conservative member of the Democratic caucus. Manchin offered a preview of how he planned to navigate the Senate.
“For the sake of the country we all love, we must commit to solving the serious problems facing our nation,” the West Virginia senator said in a statement on Wednesday. “Above all, we must avoid the extreme and polarizing rhetoric that only further divides the American people – I will work tirelessly to make sure we do. It is time for Americans to move closer together.”
Besides Warnock and Ossoff, the incoming senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado styled himself as a moderate Democrat during his short-lived 2020 presidential campaign and his time as governor before that. Biden’s incoming administration has also indicated plans to focus initially on a Covid relief bill and a large bipartisan infrastructure bill – not non-starters for liberals but hardly proposals from a progressive wishlist.
“You’re not going to see the [supreme] court expanded. You’re probably won’t see the legislative filibuster ended and those kind of things,” said former senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, who represented the moderate wing of the Democratic party during his time in the Senate.
All legislation in the Senate except for reconciliation bills – which are meant to deal with tax and spending issues – need a filibuster-proof 60 votes to pass. So the question for most legislation is how many more additional senators beyond 50 can a proposal get.
Defections and bipartisan support have become rare in Congress and usually only a few senators are even willing to openly discuss bucking their party. With his slight majority, the incoming majority leader, Chuck Schumer, of New York will still have to keep all or most of his caucus in line and win over a few Republicans.
“I think Chuck Schumer has the capacity to be the savviest legislative leader since [Lyndon Baines Johnson],” Bayh added. “But even LBJ had more than a 50-50 split to work with so if anyone can make it work it’s Chuck. It’s going to be really difficult when you have the left pushing the envelope, but in a world where the Republicans are unlikely to give you any votes for what the left wants, you can’t lose a single vote.”
And then there’s the next presidential election in 2024.
Senators and their staffs are bracing for 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls in the chamber to try to position themselves to run in a large and unwieldy Republican primary. Democrats could also have a divided primary contest in the next presidential election cycle if Biden decides not to run, although Harris would be the heavy favorite in that scenario.
After the Republican senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri led a revolt against certifying Biden’s victory, it’s unclear if either of them will be able to position themselves as frontrunners in a Republican primary. Both have been mentioned as potential candidates. The revolt resulted in a swath of rioters breaking into the Capitol.
“You’re going to have all these people that are just posturing and maneuvering and each one of them is either a dealbreaker or an arsonist in the mode of Ted Cruz when Obama was president,” said a former Republican chief of staff. “And so you’re going to have all these little arsonists asking ‘how can I make a name for myself?’ and there’s going to be less Lindsey Grahams from the Obama time. There’s no John McCains. Mitt Romney will try. There’s going to be less of those guys.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
