Democrats are poised to control the US Senate. They have no excuses any more
November’s mixed election results – which saw Democrats win the presidency, but Congress remain divided – have been upturned. Thanks to Georgia’s US Senate races, the Democrats now likely control 50 senators and the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. That means the Democrats will probably control both houses of Congress, as well as the White House, for the first time in a decade.
The party has two paths before it – sweeping action or excuse-making. No doubt the Democratic establishment will still be able to find plenty of explanations for inaction. The narrow Senate margin means that conservative Democrats like Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, figures who would find a comfortable home in any center-right party around the world, will hold tremendous sway. The Senate filibuster – a procedural tactic that means it takes a three-fifths majority to force a vote on a bill – will also be invoked, as will the fact that the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, is an expert obstructionist.
But we shouldn’t accept any of this wavering and rationalization. There is a lot that the Democrats can and should be doing. For starters, as Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer will be able to select which bills come up for a vote. Combined with the weight of the presidency, this gives his party the ability to dictate the national conversation on everything from pandemic relief to healthcare. Though his record gives reason to doubt his commitment to change, Schumer could demonstrate through the legislation he prioritizes that Democrats stand for economic egalitarianism and Republicans for elite privilege.
Other action can happen directly at the executive level. As David Sirota notes, the Congressional Review Act could be invoked to undo recently enacted anti-worker regulations from the Trump White House. What’s more, in office, Biden can issue executive orders on a host of issues from climate change to criminal justice. There’s no technical reason why an American president can’t re-establish postal banking, cancel student debt, and use the power of federal contracts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It all comes down to political will.
Despite his centrist legislative record, Biden ran on a populist platform in November. He said he would improve healthcare for ordinary Americans, create manufacturing jobs, spend big on infrastructure, and raise taxes on the rich. He can make good on some of these promises, as well as the $2,000 stimulus checks we’ve been waiting for, immediately through a budget bill. The budget reconciliation process has severe limits, but especially with popular support behind a massive coronavirus stimulus, Democrats must test those limits.
To create lasting change in the United States, however, our anti-democratic institutions need to be reformed. At a minimum, this means pursuing statehood for Washington DC, expanding the federal court, and a new voting rights act. The filibuster, and the legislative gridlock that comes along with it, must also be ended.
The problem is that this gridlocked system has long served the interest of Democrats who don’t actually want to deliver on their promises to voters. The party has benefited greatly from being in opposition these past four years – every problem could be blamed on an incompetent president and, indeed, Trump was polarizing enough that running against him was an effective tactic.
By contrast, actually governing wasn’t great for the party’s fortunes. Barack Obama started in power with a filibuster-proof majority in 2009. By the time he left office, his party was at its lowest point, in terms of number of elected officials, since the 1920s. Indeed, no president in history had overseen such a decline. Obama spent political capital on a flawed health reform bill and responded to a Great Recession so meekly that millions who voted for him in 2008 had turned to Donald Trump by 2016.
Yet much of the problem went beyond Obama and lay in the erosion of the party’s traditional base. For decades, the Democrats have relied increasingly on wealthier, highly educated, and geographically cloistered voters. The trend has continued in the elections of the past year. Democrats just did enough to win power, but they need to construct a new coalition, rooted in a much broader audience, if they’re to hold on to it.
Biden relied on white suburban voters, more than any other group, to capture the presidency. Most worrying of all is that despite media narratives about a repudiation of right-populism at the ballot box, working-class voters seem to have shifted rightward in the November general election. Trump not only won many white working-class areas again, but he made inroads in black and Latino ones, too. As much as last night’s victory was a testament to the heroic efforts of Georgia’s organizers, Democrats should be very concerned about the continued workingclass dealignment from their party at the national level.
The next two years will be crucial. Democrats won the White House through a highly educated suburban coalition. But they need to rebuild a New Deal coalition for the 21st century, rooted in working-class people, to win majorities in the future. This means taking decisive action to demonstrate to voters that politics can improve their lives – and that there are material benefits to keeping McConnell and the Republicans out of power.
Now is the time for action, not excuses.
Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin magazine and a Guardian US columnist. He is the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality
For decades, the Democrats have relied increasingly on wealthier, highly educated, and geographically cloistered voters