Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo
President-elect Joe Biden stands on stage with his wife Dr. Jill Biden as he gives the thumbs-up to the cheering crowd after delivering his victory speech, November 7, 2020, in Wilmington, Delaware.
Unless the Democrats get very lucky and win both Georgia Senate seats in the January 5 runoff election, Joe Biden will have a difficult time delivering many of the sweeping reforms that he’s promised. Delivering real economic help is urgently necessary if Biden is to beat the midterm jinx and not be a lame duck as soon as the 2022 election is over.
He can achieve a lot via executive power, as the Prospect has urged in our Day One Agenda, but some things require legislation. And Mitch McConnell will be going to great lengths to block everything Biden proposes.
In 1948, Harry Truman was in an even worse fix. The Republicans had won control of both houses in the 1946 midterms, and Truman was being compared unflatteringly to his giant predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt.
Republicans were obstructing everything Truman tried to do, and no serious person expected him to win re-election in November.
So that summer, Truman discovered his inner FDR. He traveled the country by train, and his rhetoric became more potent as he went. His nemesis was the “Do Nothing” 80th Congress.
In several speeches, Truman declared that GOP stood for “Gluttons of Privilege.” At the National Plowing Contest in Dexter, Iowa, Truman told the 80,000 farmers in the audience that “this Republican Congress has already stuck a pitchfork in the farmer’s back.”
As the size of crowds increased, people would shout, “Give ’em hell, Harry.” Short of stature and ordinary looking, he became the emblem of the forgotten man and woman.
In November, in defiance of all the predictions, Truman won. He took back Congress with him, an astonishing 54 to 42 in the Senate, and 262 to 171 in the House.
If McConnell sets himself up as obstructionist in chief, Biden needs to make McConnell the face of all that the American people need and are being denied.
Adequate economic relief? It’s the do-nothing McConnell Senate. Reliable health coverage? Massive investment in modern infrastructure? McConnell and the do-nothing Senate.
Truman was able to win back Congress, as well as his own election, in a presidential year. Normally, a midterm is much tougher, especially if a new president has little to show for his first two years.
This time, in addition to having a perfect stage villain in McConnell, Biden will have the luck of the numbers. In 2022, no incumbent Senate Democrat is vulnerable, but five or six Republican seats will be in contention.
In Pennsylvania, which is steadily trending more Democratic, GOP Sen. Pat Toomey, who barely won in 2016, is retiring. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin is up. So is Rob Portman in Ohio. In Iowa, Chuck Grassley is expected to retire. And Richard Burr is up in North Carolina.
Except for the Toomey seat, none of these is a slam dunk for Democrats, but all are possible. And if Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed to fill a vacancy, hangs on to her Georgia seat, she faces the voters in 2022 as well.
And if these Republican worthies spend the next two years helping Mitch McConnell obstruct, and Biden does his job, all are potentially vulnerable. By flipping the script, taking back the Senate, and having a stronger second two years, Biden would be well positioned for 2024.
Give ’em hell, Joe.
