Georgia On My Mind
2021.01.05 by Just Mason
Today, the outcome of the Georgia Senate runoff election will be determined, and with it, the legislative strategy of the next two years. Currently, Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff each have about a two-point lead over their respective opponents, incumbent Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, according to the latest data on FiveThirtyEight. Surely, polling data in this day and age is to be taken with a grain of salt, but here’s hoping that in this case the data is indicative of the outcome. I do not mean to imply that the Democrats winning these seats, thus splitting the Senate 50–50 with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as tie-breaker, will solve all, or even some, of the problems we face: Far from it. However, taking some control of the Senate away from Mitch McConnell would clearly be a step in the right direction.
McConnell has, in some disturbing ways, revolutionized American politics. Upon the election of Barack Obama as President, McConnell, then Senate minority leader, vowed a hard-line obstructionist strategy to prevent any and all legislation favored by Obama or the Democratically-controlled Congress. This stance broke with historical Congressional orthodoxy stretching back to the early days of Congress, signalling that the era of collaboration, cooperation, and compromise between parties within the legislature (which had fluctuated significantly throughout the years, but had never been entirely abandoned), was over. The Obama administration missed a number of opportunities to work toward the progressive policies he had espoused during his campaign, despite McConnell’s strategy of opposition-in-principle, early in his Presidency before control shifted to Republicans in the House in the 110th Congress (2011–2013). Throughout his leadership, McConnell effectively strangled virtually every piece of legislation that was proposed, with notable exceptions such as the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and in 2018 became the longest-serving Republican leader in the Senate’s history.
It is important to keep in mind that McConnell’s obstructionism was still quite effective as leader of the Senate minority; in all likelihood, even if Democrats win both seats today, he will simply revert from majority back to minority leader. It is also important to consider that prototypical DINO Joe Manchin, in this 50–50 scenario, will be in a position to help McConnell and the Republicans deny movement on Democratic legislation, or at least secure major concessions from Democrats on any legislative effort. Obviously, if your hope is to see progressive (or the much more likely neoliberal) legislation in the next few years, the best possible outcome is for Warnock and Ossoff to win. However, the combined problems of McConnell’s stonewalling, right-of-center Democratic Senators like Manchin, and the significantly diminished Democratic majority in the House will prove to make even this situation far from ideal.
The left will certainly not be able to rely on SCOTUS any time soon, and with the lifespan of tortoises topping out around 125 years, the prospects for an even remotely collaborative Congress are slim for the foreseeable future. For these reasons, I think that after the results come in for Georgia (and aside from vigorously primarying every single member in 2022), we must shift our focus toward executive authority.
As David Dayen has repeatedly pointed out in the excellent project in The American Prospect, “The Day One Agenda”, Biden can exercise executive power in a number of ways which would be hugely beneficial to the vast majority of Americans. Here are a few, from Dayen’s September 23rd article:
“Without signing a single new law, the next president can lower prescription drug prices, cancel student debt, break up the big banks, give everybody who wants one a bank account, counteract the dominance of monopoly power, protect farmers from price discrimination and unfair dealing, force divestment from fossil fuel projects, close a slew of tax loopholes, hold crooked CEOs accountable, mandate reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, allow the effective legalization of marijuana, make it easier for 800,000 workers to join a union, and much, much more.”
If more Americans are made aware of the fact that such benefits to the working class can be achieved, without the complicity of McConnell and other proponents of Gilded Age socioeconomic policies in both parties, perhaps the Biden administration, as was claimed consistently by his centrist liberal supporters throughout the 2020 campaign cycle, could actually be pushed to the left. Perhaps it’s a long shot, but short of a massive resurgence of union action across the nation (stay tuned for more on that) it just may be the only shot we get, at least until the 2022 midterms.