The health scare for the Senate’s longest serving member, Democrat Patrick Leahy, just before he’s due to preside over next week’s impeachment trial was a reminder of just how fragile his party’s Senate majority is.
Leahy is just one of a half-dozen Democratic senators from states with Republican governors. One interim appointment could shift power in an instant in the 50-50 Senate, a circumstance somewhat akin to the one that Democrats dealt with after Ted Kennedy died in August 2009 and Republican Scott Brown’s surprise win in the special election to fill his seat put an abrupt end to the Democrats’ supermajority and nearly took down Obamacare with it.
Things are a little less precarious in the House, where Democrats are clinging to a 221-to-211 majority and David Wasserman with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report says the GOP could use its advantage in statehouses to retake control in 2022 by flipping six seats through redistricting alone.
All of that only increases the urgency for Democrats to act now, while they still can, on their priorities.
“The future of the Democratic Party is tied to the future of the Biden administration, which is tied to the fate of the COVID vaccine, which is tied to the economy coming back,” says Elaine Kamarck with the Brookings Institution. “Biden has to do whatever he can to get a big comprehensive package.”
Democrats failed to win a single state legislature in 2020, and that’s where the power lies to redraw congressional districts once the final 2020 Census numbers are reported later this year. Democratic strongholds like New York and, for the first time, California are losing seats while Texas is again a big winner.
“Democrats are increasingly the party of the wealthy and the well-heeled, and they have capitalized on the explosion of interest and raised a lot of money to combat redistricting,” says Wasserman. “But they lack the raw power of the Republicans. Republicans have the final say over 188 districts versus 73 for the Democrats.”
The biggest prizes are Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia. These four states are expected to collectively gain six seats from the census. “Bottom line,” says Wasserman. “Republicans are bound to pick up somewhere between five and 10 seats in those four states. Then the question becomes: Will they get super-aggressive in Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, and Tennessee where they could dismantle very competitive districts? They could divide Nashville five ways so (Democratic Rep.) Jim Cooper’s hold on power is obliterated.”
Republicans are already busy at work trying to undo Democratic inroads in Atlanta and Dallas, where the easy play is to combine suburban districts Democrats won in 2020 and make up-and-coming Democratic stars run against each other, like Lucy McBath in Georgia’s 6th District and Carolyn Bourdeaux in the neighboring 7th District.
Whether the Senate majority endures for the next two years may be in the hands of providence, while the Democrats’ future in the House is in the hands of lawyers. “Their route to equity is through the courts,” says Wasserman. Democrats have amassed a war chest of more than $80 million to challenge GOP drawn redistricting maps. By successfully overturning GOP maps in Florida and North Carolina in 2016 and Virginia in 2018, Democrats likely gained seven seats. “Without those victories, Pelosi wouldn’t have been Speaker,” says Wasserman.
The shifts in population don’t necessarily disadvantage Democrats, says Kamarck. “When Californians move, they don’t move to Texas and become gun-toting Republicans. Four years ago, we never could have imagined Georgia going blue.” She argues that the edge Republicans have in the upcoming redistricting is “problematic but not all gloomy for Democrats. To the extent” that Republicans have become “the party of insane people who believe Democrats are pedophiles, they’re going to lose suburbs they historically won.”
Looking ahead to 2022, Wasserman says Democrats have an advantage among educated people, and they turn out in the midterms. But there is typically a backlash against the party in power and whatever regulations have been imposed. But he cautions against assuming that because college-educated voters have moved toward the Democrats that the suburbs are sure to follow.
Contrary to the popular belief propelled by Biden’s surprising success in turning Georgia and Arizona blue, Republicans did not lose the suburbs in 2020. “Trump was the best thing going for down ballot Republicans,” says Wasserman. “He turned out millions of low propensity voters in the suburbs. Republicans have no incentive to change their posture towards Trump. They’re already courting him to campaign in 2022 and it’s probably the right move strategically.”
Wasserman’s findings after examining hundreds of House races helps explain Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago where he posed smiling with former President Trump. A poll taken by YouGov and The Economist found that 72 percent of Republicans believe Joe Biden’s win was illegitimate. “There’s a problem of news literacy in the country,” says Wasserman. “A large swath of the country is very distrustful of institutions and willing to buy into things that are objectively untrue. At the heart of this is the blurring of news and opinion and entertainment. People can mainline whatever set of facts they want, and Trump and the Republicans have done a better job of connecting with those voters.”
And that connection remains despite Trump losing the election. The bulwark against Trump and “the big lie” that led to the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 is a fragile Democratic majority in the House and Senate. A loss of a single Senate seat could put Mitch McConnell back into full command and able to block everything even as his party refuses to convict Trump of what everyone could see with their own eyes was an attempted coup. Tragically for Republicans and for the country, courting Trump remains good politics for winning House seats.
