The recent elections in the United States, both for the presidency and for the two chambers of the US Congress, are not the same for the people of the United States as they are for outsiders. They have different meanings for people on the one hand and for foreign correspondents, diplomats and for those abroad who seek fulfilment of their ‘American dream’ on the other.
For the second category of people, the run-off elections in Georgia last fortnight, for example, which delivered the US Senate for the Democrats was more a media event, not a voting exercise with any real consequences. With or without the victory of the twin Democratic Senate candidates from Georgia, Joe Biden, as the 46th US President, would have had his sway on Capitol Hill.
Doomsday predictions since the November results, which produced a Senate with exactly half its 100-strong membership in the hands of Republicans, led to worries of an impending stalemate in the US legislative agenda. Retiring President Donald Trump’s partisan rhetoric and his tasteless shredding of time-honoured conventions in public life had created the bogey that the new Senate may not even confirm Biden’s Cabinet appointees.
The mainstream media, which is now having its revenge on Trump for all the contempt he had shown them for four years, had floated a simplistic argument that the two Senate seats from Georgia must go to Democrats to prevent such a stalemate. They incessantly warned that Biden would be hamstrung by a hostile and intransigent Senate in which the Republicans have a majority.
Their argument was that if the two Georgia seats went to Democrats, they too would be at the exact half-way strength of 50 Senators. The next Vice President, Kamala Harris, would then use her casting vote as Senate President and get Biden’s agenda passed unimpeded. During the entire campaign for the two run-off elections, this argument went unchallenged.
With the camp followers of Trump in the Grand Old Party busying themselves solely in a wasted and self-defeating effort to overturn Biden’s victory in the electoral college, this argument gained currency nationwide. That enabled Democrats to convert what would otherwise have been a local poll into a national political cause célèbre.
Imagine that the two outgoing Republican Senators from Georgia, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler had been re-elected. Their victories would have raised the Republican strength in the Senate to 52 while Democrats remained the minority at 48. With the presidency and the House of Representatives in the hands of Democrats, the Senate would have been the only elected nationwide platform in the hands of Republicans.
However, the Senate is a legislative chamber of which Biden has been an integral part for 44 years, 36 of which, as a member and another eight years as its presiding officer-cum-US Vice President. Genial by nature and a firm believer in consensus, Biden has a history of reaching across the aisle and he carries with him many IOUs earned from Republican Senators over many years.
Barack Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act — popularly known as Obamacare — would never have come about if his Vice President Biden had not persuaded many Senators and Representatives to vote for it. Biden eschewed protocol and hierarchy in the first Obama term to reach out to Republican Senators to sell Obamacare.
When the India-US nuclear deal proposed by Republican President George W Bush was in the pre-operationalisation stage, Biden was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was chairman of this important committee also on an earlier tenure when Bush proposed the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP), the precursor of the nuclear deal. Non-proliferationists by conviction, many Democratic Senators and Representatives were opposed to both the NSSP and the nuclear deal with India. Although both these initiatives had Republican origins, Biden used his committee chairmanship as a platform for building consensus through bipartisanship.
With such a history as a consensus-builder in Washington, Biden did not need the two Democratic Senators from Georgia to push forward his legislative agenda. There are at least four Republican Senators in the new Congress who would never think of blocking Biden’s Cabinet choices — a strategy which hard core Trump supporters favour.
These Republican Senators are Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Mitt Romney of Utah. Their reasons for supporting Biden are as diverse as their geographical loyalties and belonging. What is important is that their support would have given Biden the working Senate majority he needed.
Indeed, for Biden and Harris, a Republican Senate with a slender majority provided by two members from Georgia may have been a blessing in disguise. The Biden-Harris team could have used such a Senate composition to rein in the Left wing of the Democratic Party, which turned off many voters in November even in counties such Miami-Dade in Florida, which are solidly and traditionally Democratic. ‘Socialism’ is a spectre for most in the US and a Republican victory in the Georgia run-offs would have been a palliative against the so-called red scourge.
Domestically for the US, the Georgia results have a very different meaning. Many people see the election of a black Senator from Georgia as historic. They also view Trump’s loss in Georgia as a turning point in US politics.
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