Stephen Breyer can read the electoral tea leaves. Although Joe Biden still has another three years of his presidency to go, his party’s razor-thin control of Congress is almost surely doomed come November. At 83 years old, the Supreme Court justice is a full decade older than the next oldest justice, Clarence Thomas. Unless Breyer wishes literally to bet on his life one of the three crucial remaining liberal seats on the court, it was now or never to announce his retirement.
Biden’s presidency is one year old, and it was one of the worst first years in modern history. Save for a bipartisan infrastructure bill, he has achieved nothing positive. On the other side of the ledger, we have 7% inflation and the collapse of democracy in Afghanistan, and now, Ukraine is probably about to fall off the map, making Donald Trump’s phone call with its president, the one for which he was impeached, seem quaint.
A Supreme Court appointment may wind up the only lasting part of his legacy upon which his party can look fondly. For that, Biden has his predecessor to thank.
The embarrassing disaster of Jan. 6 may overshadow our hindsight of the 2020 election. But aside from Trump’s loss, those elections went extraordinarily well for Republicans, all things considered. Not only did Trump himself outperform all polls, but Republicans managed to shrink Nancy Pelosi’s control of the House to the single digits. Republicans also ended the night Nov. 3 with Mitch McConnell on the cusp of maintaining Senate control, with just the two seats in Georgia to defend in a runoff.
Although Trump had lost Georgia to Biden by 11,799 votes, David Perdue received 88,098 more votes than Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, and the combined votes of Republicans Kelly Loeffler and Doug Collins outnumbered those of Democrat Rafael Warnock. It seemed like the GOP would hold on.
But rather than fight like hell to save the Senate and his legacy, Trump spent the next two months obsessively promulgating the lie that widespread election fraud had robbed him of a rightful victory. Rather than lead his party to victory, he indulged his own delusions and helped two of the least impressive Senate candidates in America, Ossoff and Warnock, win their races on Jan. 5.
Short of an absolute miracle, Biden is already a lame-duck president — a warm body whose best success was preventing a second Trump term. But with Chuck Schumer and Kamala Harris still in control of the Senate, Trump’s “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theory may just hand Biden the most lasting win for liberals of his time in the Oval.
