After the topsy-turvy first 24 hours of this this election, after a predicted Red Mirage confounded even those prepared for initially better results for the president, then dissolved into the haze, and it began to become increasingly probable that Biden would win this thing, a new source of gloom closed over progressives — it appeared the Democratic effort to take back the Senate had fallen short. The inevitable result? Biden’s presidency was surely over before it had even begun. Mitch McConnell would devote himself to making Biden a one-term president. Forget about getting judges through the Senate — it would be a miracle if he were even able to appoint cabinet members over implacable GOP opposition. A McConnell-led Senate would kneecap the Biden presidency to set up a red wave in 2022 and a Republican president in 2024.
While I’m not immune to these same fears, treating a log-jammed outcome as some sort of inevitable likelihood is too politically cynical by half. We now see that both Senate races in Georgia will proceed to runoffs due to no candidate receiving more than 50% of the vote, which means that the Democrats still have a chance to re-take the Senate. The very real possibility that the election outcome will leave Trump-less GOP voters less than inspired to show up at the polls next month should help Democrats preserve a little faith. But even if this hail Mary solution does not come to pass, realpolitik talk of the gridlock to come is premature and self-defeating. Perhaps worst of all, they share a cynical take on the Biden victory, viewed as the result of a close election showing that the country is deeply divided and gridlock the necessary result. It all wraps up into one big shit sandwich: Biden could barely even win because almost half of all Americans wanted an authoritarian monster as president, and of course we won’t be able to get anything good done with a GOP senate standing in the way.
But Democrats need to recognize and celebrate Biden’s impending victory for all that it is, including the defeat of the greatest presidential threat to American democracy since our founding. This is a huge win, and over-emphasizing what a close run thing it is constitutes a masochistic refusal to acknowledge its importance, for both the country and for the Democratic Party. It is hard to beat an incumbent — this has only happened four times in the past 100 years — and even harder to beat an incumbent when he repeatedly breaks the law and makes corrupt use of the perks of his office as part of his re-election campaign. The Democrats have every right to consider themselves the party that saved American democracy from a white supremacist authoritarian, and should damn well start acting like it. The party has defended core American values of the rule of law and free and fair elections, in the face of a GOP that has embraced the failed authoritarianism of Donald Trump. Kicking Donald Trump out of the White House is a public service for all Americans, no matter their political affiliation — just think of all the Trump voters who have died because the president betrayed their trust. In a way that history will recognize, Democrats have saved these Republican voters from themselves.
While I don’t have any great theories for how Democrats might leverage this confidence into persuading Republican senators in a GOP-majority Senate to support legislation that protects our economy, our democracy, our health care, and our environment. But any possible paths to doing so certainly do NOT involve downgrading the magnitude of the Democrats’ victory, or the corruption of Donald Trump that these same Republican senators happily enabled. If there’s any chance of getting a couple of GOP senators on their side, it’s going to have to involve maximizing the fallout from the Trump years as a possible threat to their re-election chances, and impressing on them the reality that Trumpism has passed its high water mark. The Democrats need to proceed with the mindset of a majority, winning party that has driven white nationalism, authoritarianism, and obscene corruption from the halls of the White House, and whose Republican opposition has forfeited any moral authority by its complicity with this failed president.