2020 After-Election Analysis
— The path forward requires a progressive imperative!
Party Leadership Should Resign
Foremost, DNC chair Tom Perez and his national committee leadership, plus the heads of all of state party committees, must immediately resign. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leaders and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his leaders should also resign.
Why?
They clearly dropped the ball this election, as they’ve dropped the ball pretty much throughout the whole past decade. Their won-loss record for gaining new Members is pitiful! They repeatedly fail to acknowledge and, in fact, work to defeat the issues advocated by Bernie Sanders which must become the driving force of the party.
Today’s Democratic leadership is stuck more on pedigreed politicians coupled to high-priced consultancies and a misguided appeal to its donor base, than they are with bringing forward and opening the doors for meaningful policy for people.
By going along with Republicans on economic issues and America’s wretched foreign policy, they’ve failed to establish Democrats as a true and genuine opposition party. They are living in days past where pretty much only god, guns and gay became the determining factors for one to decide which political party to support.
Biden’s Ace-in-The-Hole? The Coronavirus!
Were it not for the tragedy of the Covid-19 crisis and the ill-manner to which Donald Trump has and continues to deal with this crisis, Biden would have gotten clobbered in the 2020 election. Trump would have left him in the dust due to the Democratic Party’s clear and present failure to widely appeal to working people. Astonishingly, the exit polling showed Democrats lost support among the important Black and Latino demographics.
Biden won only on a ‘we’re sick of Trump because he’s dangerous’ vote! Were it not for concern over the Coronavirus paving the way for enhanced mail-in voting to help reduce spread of the disease, Biden never would have reached his numbers to defeat Trump. Also, Democrats likely would not have won the US House.
What Bernie Sanders Stood For Still Survives
Retrospectively, the Democrats should have ran with Bernie Sanders at the top of the ticket instead of Joe Biden. Biden proved he had absolutely no coat-tails and no ability to draw people into the electoral process for helping the party win the down ballot races. This would have been right in Bernie’s wheelhouse — he would have clobbered Trump and Democrats would have easily won both the House and Senate.
The Sanders crowds and volunteerism, his outreach to people who wouldn’t normally participate in the political process, would have been extremely helpful for Democrats in 2020. He would have placed the striking issues squarely on the table to prove again, the Democratic Party had gotten back to its strong, true and loyal FDR-JFK roots, that a living wage and healthy middle class coupled with opportunity for poor folk is the key to The American Dream.
The Present Reality
With Republicans defending nearly two dozen Senate races and Democrats trying to keep only a dozen, the D’s should have widely won the Senate. They didn’t. Instead, they came up two seats short to what was needed.
Worst, they almost lost control of the US House. As it stands right now — with 23 races still outstanding, five days after the election — Democrats have not yet won the 218 seats needed to keep control. It looks like they’ll come in with enough seats to barely creep over the 218 mark needed for majority.
Think of it this way: Biden may have won the presidency; but Pelosi almost lost her speakership.
Keeping the House is especially crucial since following the results of the 2020 US Census, the new House will hold the imperative to redraw the congressional districts that will last for the next 10 years, until the next census. The Republicans got to do this in 2010. What that did was create what became a royal pain in the ass for the Obama Administration and the 2016 election.
What’s the Best Path Forward? Change the Balance of the Senate!
It might seem a bit overly-optimistic for Democrats to rely on winning both US Senate run-off elections in Georgia, a state that’s typically long on being more red than blue. But winning the two seats would give Democrats control of the US Senate as there’d become a 50–50 tie with Vice President Kamala Harris, as president of the Senate, breaking the tie.
But is having among the Democrats crusty ole’ West Virginian Senator Joe Manchin a problem for Democrats? You bet! Manchin is more of a Republican than he is a Democrat. So simply winning the two Georgian run-offs races won’t be enough for Democrats. They need tactically to do something else.
Today it was reported that Biden is thinking about appointing Mitt Romney as Secretary of Health & Human Services. Wrong! What good is it to appoint to the cabinet a sitting Republican senator only to have that senator replaced by another Republican who’d get appointed by a Republican governor?
If Biden is hellbent and determined to place Republicans onto his cabinet for the sake of a perceived unity (yeah, right!), then he should at least select a Republican senator that comes from a state that has a Democratic governor. Then that governor could appoint a Democratic senator.
There are seven states with Democratic governors and Republican senators. President-elect Biden, please put your political operatives immediately to work to accomplish this objective. It may require some sweetheart deal making — a promise here, a promise there, a toe-step here, a toe-step there and some wink-winks, etc. — but so long as what you do is within the law and within procedural prerogatives, by all means do this. If you’ve got to pardon Trump to sweeten the deal to pull it off? Do it! The future is more important than the past.
In fact, for Democrats to control the Presidency, the Senate and the House, for the good of the nation, you absolutely need to do this!
Yes, eventually, there would become a special election to replace the Republican-appointed cabinet pick, but this would buy enough time for Democrats to establish new rules for operating the Senate, enable early passage of much-needed legislation and also take steps to reform the US Supreme Court, whether by term limits or by an expansion of Members.
PS: I think we’d all agree Mitch McConnell is deserving of an enormous bit of payback. Eh!?!
