San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
High stakes for Biden in Senate races
ATLANTA — Usually it’s a president’s first midterm election that reorders a White House’s political approach and priorities. For Presidentelect Joe Biden, his most defining congressional election is coming before he takes office.
Two runoffs Tuesday in Georgia will decide which party controls the Senate and, thus, how far the new president can reach legislatively on issues such as the pandemic, health care, taxation, energy and the environment. For a politician who sold himself to Americans as a uniter and a seasoned legislative broker, the Georgia elections will help determine whether he’s able to live up to his billing.
“It’s not that you can’t get anything done in the minority or get everything done in the majority, but having the gavel, having that leadership control can be the difference in success or failure for an administration,” said Jim Manley, once a top aide to former Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid, who held his post opposite current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Both Georgia Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock must win Tuesday to split the Senate 5050. Vice Presidentelect Kamala Harris, as president of the Senate, would provide the tiebreaker needed to determine control.
To be sure, even a closely divided Democratic Senate wouldn’t give Biden everything he wants. Senate rules still require 60 votes to advance most major legislation; for now, there aren’t enough Democrats willing to change that requirement. So, regardless of Georgia’s results, Biden will have to win over Republicans in a Senate where a bipartisan group of more centrist senators stand to see their stock rise.
A Democratic Senate still would clear an easier path for Biden’s nominees to key posts, especially on the federal judiciary, and give Democrats control of committees and much of the floor action. Conversely, a Senate led by McConnell almost certainly would deny Biden major legislative victories, as it did late in President Barack Obama’s tenure, by keeping his agenda from even getting upordown votes.
Biden’s team is keenly aware of the stakes. The presidentelect will travel to Atlanta on Monday, the eve of the runoffs, to campaign with Ossoff and Warnock for the second time in three weeks. Biden’s campaign aides have helped raise millions to boost the party infrastructure that helped Biden become the first Democratic presidential nominee since 1992 to carry the state. Vice Presidentelect Kamala Harris will campaign Sunday in
Savannah.
In his last visit, Biden called Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler “roadblocks” and urged Georgians “to vote for two United States senators who know how to say the word ‘ yes’ and not just ‘ no.’ ”
Democrats’ limited expectations about their own power, even with a potential majority, belie the exaggerated claims Republicans have used in the Georgia races.
In Perdue’s and Loeffler’s telling, a Democratic Senate would “rubber stamp” a “socialist agenda,” from “ending private insurance” and “expanding the Supreme Court” to adopting wholesale a “Green New Deal” that would spend trillions and raise taxes on every U. S. household by thousands of dollars each year. Besides misrepresenting Biden’s and most Democratic senators’ policy preferences, that characterization ignores the reality of the Senate’s roster.