Democrats must have heaved a sigh of relief after a bitter and expensive election went their way when Raphael Warnock got the better of Herschel Walker in the Georgia run-off on Tuesday, giving the Biden White House a 51-49 majority in the US Senate.
The numbers give some breathing space to the US President Biden. The Vice-President now does not always have to rush to Capitol Hill to cast a tie breaking vote.
The key takeaway from the November 8 elections is that Biden will not have an easy time governing in the next two years. In the 434-Chamber, the Republicans have a nine-seat advantage over the Democrats.
The Biden White House was bracing itself for a tsunami given the previous track records — Bill Clinton lost 54 House and 8 Senate seats in 1994 and Barack Obama lost 63 House and 6 Senate seats in 2010. In 2022, the anticipated Red Wave simply did not happen.
Trying to ‘get even’
The difficulty in governing does not confine itself only to ideological differences between the parties as it has to do with trying to “get even”. For instance, Democrats, especially in the House, are eager to get the debt ceiling raised before the end of the current session and not wait for January 3 when the gavel is not in their hands.
The Republicans have vowed to make this a major issue unless substantial headway is made on taxes; the hardliners among the Republicans are even holding this out for agreeing on electing Kevin McCarthy of California as their next leader.
President Biden knows that there would have to be trade-offs but certainly not to the extent of triggering a backlash from Progressives in his own party.
There is a real danger of the policy agenda getting side tracked into endless investigations and impeachment procedures as a part of the payback game on Capitol Hill.
Some in the Grand Old Party have suggested investigations of their own — perhaps starting with the President and senior members of his administration, notably the Secretary of Homeland Security — for failures on the border. This comes at a time when the bipartisan committee looking into the January 6, 2021, rioting is close to forwarding its recommendations for criminal prosecutions to the Justice Department.
And the Supreme Court has paved the way for former President Donald Trump’s tax returns of six years to be handed over to the House Ways and Means Committee. How the lawmakers proceed on this remains to be seen.
Arguably, the most significant outcome from this mid-term election has been for the Republicans, giving them the opportunity to loosen Trump’s hold on the party.
Already, moderate Republicans have been coming out louder and bolder against the 45th President, urging for a clean break from the bizarre and fancy thinking that have handed only election losses — first in 2020, in the mid-terms of 2022 and now in the Georgia run-off.
Trump’s latest salvo against the American Constitution, calling to toss out parts of it, has only made matters worse as the GOP sees the fearful prospect of losing more political ground in 2024.
Biden and Trump stayed out of the Georgia run-off, but for different reasons — the former because of his low popularity ratings and the latter because he was apparently asked not to come. Increasingly conservative Republicans are stressing that in the mid-terms of 2022, five of Trump endorsed-backed Senate candidates in New Hampshire, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Georgia were defeated, with wins only in Ohio, Wisconsin and North Carolina.
And some in mainstream GOP have signalled their dismay in any impeachment talk, stressing, among other things, that all this huffing and puffing may not even reach the Senate floor for a vote on conviction.
The writer has been a senior journalist in Washington DC for 14 years covering North America and the United Nations.