What Happened This Week In Washington — And Georgia

I’m not sure I’d read too much into any reports of turnout dropoffs, Nate. Those counties may simply not yet be fully reporting. The whole “98 percent of the expected vote is in” thing is based simply on estimates of what we think the final turnout will be.

Again, there’s nothing here that should make you feel like the race is in the bag for the Democrats — it’s going to be a long night, and we don’t have much info yet on the Election Day vote. But lots of small, bearish signs, like this one, for the GOP.

There is a lot of coverage suggesting that “the fate of President-elect Joe Biden’s agenda” is on the line tonight, as Bloomberg News put it earlier today. I am skeptical, for two reasons.

The first reason is at least for his first year, Biden’s presidency is going to be centered around fighting COVID-19. Getting tens of millions of Americans vaccinated is a logistical and messaging challenge much more so than a legislative one. And getting people to wear masks is more about communications than policy. Of course, it would help Biden deal with COVID-19 if Republicans in Congress worked with him and authorized a ton of new spending to fight the spread of the virus. But in my view, he can do much better on that issue than Trump without having a Senate majority.

Secondly, even if Democrats win both Senate seats, they will have exactly 50 senators, so an ability to win votes 51-50 only with Vice President Harris. On the one hand, that means Biden can get judges and cabinet members appointed without any GOP support. That matters a lot. That said, legislation on most issues requires 60 votes in the Senate — unless Democrats get rid of the filibuster. And it’s not clear that all the Democratic senators are on board with that. (In fact, post-election, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia came out against getting rid of the filibuster.) And while there is a process called reconciliation by which legislation on fiscal matters can be passed by a simple majority in the Senate, that means Democrats must get everyone on board, which is generally hard to do on a major policy issue. For example, Republicans tried to pass Obamacare repeal via reconciliation in 2017 but still fell short of a majority.

So I tend to think that Democrats lost the chance to pass big legislation in November, when they lost winnable Senate races in states like Maine and North Carolina. A 51-50 majority is just really hard, whereas 52 or 53 seats would give them some wiggle room. At the same time, I think Biden’s first two years would still be considered successful if he returned America back to its pre-COVID-19 status and that seems possible — without much help from the Senate, whether it is controlled by Democrats or Republicans.