After Georgia triumph, here's Biden's program
The victories last week of Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Georgia’s Senate runoff elections may have been overshadowed by the riot at the Capitol, but they will shape America and the world every bit as much, at least until the 2022 midterms.
After the presidential election in November, Republicans consoled themselves with their apparent control of the Senate, in addition to their gains in the House. It seemed that Biden’s agenda was stillborn. But now that Democrats have 50 senators, Vice President Kamala Harris will cast the tie-breaking vote. In theory at least, the Democrats can enact whatever legislation they want.
The first effect of the Democratic majority is that the progressive wing of the party will expect a share of the spoils. Unlike in 2016, Bernie Sanders bowed out of the race relatively early, to endorse Biden. The president elect championed a much more moderate agenda than Sanders, but the senator and his supporters gritted their teeth and showed up at the ballot box in record numbers to defeat Trump.
Following the election, Biden who assumed he would be governing with an opposition-controlled Senate, was in no hurry to fill his cabinet with progressives. When Sanders himself announced his interest in a cabinet appointment, Biden’s official excuse for not offering one was that it would enable the Republican governor of Vermont to appoint a conservative to fill Sanders’ Senate seat. But the truth was that Biden wanted his cabinet appointments to be consensus moderates, whom Senate Republicans could also support.
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