Will Biden parry the progressives?

The 2022 campaign for control of Congress began even before Joe Biden’s last call for unity wafted from the Inauguration Day podium. For Republicans, President Biden’s first day was a bitter gift, as he began reversing pro-life initiatives of the Trump years. Judging from his early actions, and from the rhetoric of progressives striving to set his agenda, the Democrats are not thinking much about 2022. Should they?

Right out of the gate, Mr. Biden’s party picked up new registrants repulsed by the Capitol riot and weary of Donald Trump’s constant chaos. Marching to the progressive drumbeat doesn’t seem likely to keep these new adherents, though, so what gives? Does holding onto Congress matter to the left?

You might have expected Democrats to worry more about their own precariousness. With 222 seats in the House, to the Republicans’ 211, and the Senate evenly split, Mr. Biden has the slimmest majority of any new Democratic president in the two parties’ history, dating back to 1856.

By contrast, after Watergate and Richard Nixon’s impeachment, incoming Democrat Jimmy Carter enjoyed a 61-38 advantage in the Senate and 292-143 in the House.

Instead of worrying about this, though, the Dems’ left-most members are pushing hard on Mr. Biden. One outfit attracting significant attention is RootsAction, a decade-old nonprofit that claims 1.3 million members and has nabbed luminaries such as Daniel Ellsberg (of the Pentagon Papers) and Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (of ice cream fame) to join their effort to steer “Status Quo Joe” ever leftward.

Even Clinton-era stalwart Robert Reich appears in RootsAction’s #NoHoneymoon video to urge “maximum pressure on the Biden administration.”

One of Mr. Reich’s phrases, seen through the prism of recent events, is especially striking: “The window of opportunity is very, very short.”

It almost seems progressives think the post-Trump GOP crackup is not as devastating as we’ve heard. It’s as if they expect to lose Congress in 2022 — and don’t care.

In the wake of the Capitol riot, from Erie to Orlando, thousands of voters left the Republican Party. The Erie, Pa., Times-News reports that 114 Erie County Republicans canceled their party affiliation from Jan. 4-11, compared with 22 Democrats — a reversal of the county’s 2020 trend.

In the same week, in three counties of the Orlando, Fla., area, Republicans switched parties more often than Democrats in ratios as high as 7to-1 — even in Republican-dominated Lake County (at a ratio of 5-to-1).

Seasoned observers postulate that the same trend prevails in areas where such statistics are not gathered. Don’t the nation’s Democrats want to keep these voters?

Some clearly don’t care. Progressives seeking to control Mr. Biden’s agenda could fairly assume the postriot registrants are not also converts to the far left. They know midterm elections almost always favor the opposition. And they know midterms favor Republicans even more, because GOP voters historically vote in greater numbers than Dems in “off years.”

So, no, the progressives don’t care about the midterms.

And they don’t need to. They can work in the reasonable confidence that whatever they accomplish will be here to stay. Look no further than Obamacare for proof.

The specter of the federal government (mis)managing one-sixth of the American economy galvanized libertarians and conservatives in 2010, flipping the U.S. House to the Republicans by a 64-vote margin. But Obamacare endures.

Once a huge expansion of government is enacted, it is nearly impossible to repeal. And that’s what progressives want: ever more government to cajole, or force, the nation to conform with their narrow vision.

“The window of opportunity is very, very short,” Mr. Reich observed, but the left can afford to play this very short game.

The battle against tyranny is long, and it’s not a game. Whether the anti-liberty impulse springs up on the right or the left, defeating it is the eternal task of realists. Mr. Trump’s excesses shook up many voters. The progressives’ coming excesses will shake up millions more, possibly to Mr. Biden’s regret.