President Joe Biden has been campaigning aggressively during the final weeks of the midterm elections, attacking his opponents over issues ranging from student loans to Social Security to the economy to Big Oil.
He’s got good reason to do so — the president would be up against both a conservative Congress and a conservative Supreme Court if Republicans take over the House and Senate next year.
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“Democrats’ agenda is pretty much stymied if they lose control of both chambers of Congress,” said David Greenberg, a Rutgers University history, journalism, and media studies professor.
Biden would have two major avenues in that case, Greenberg argues. One is to advocate Democratic priorities and run in 2024 on the argument that Republicans blocked progress. But a more successful approach would be to try and find common ground with the opposition party.
“Clinton did this, Eisenhower did this, Nixon and Reagan both did,” he said. “When the opposing party controls Congress, instead of saying, ‘We can’t pass anything,’ you have to genuinely compromise. It’ll be interesting to see if Biden does that.”
Republicans are strongly favored to win the House, according to FiveThirtyEight, and slightly favored to take the Senate as well. Losing the latter could make it difficult for Biden to confirm nominations, including to the all-important Supreme Court, though a vacancy is considered unlikely within the next two years.
Biden has enjoyed a relatively high amount of legislative success during the first half of his term, signing the American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, a modest gun control measure, the CHIPS and Science Act, the PACT Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act since taking office. Those legislative wins are almost certainly over if Democrats lose even one chamber of Congress.
In that case, the president could echo the tactics of his former boss, Barack Obama, who famously tried a “pen and phone” strategy of executive orders. However, courts at multiple levels have shown a willingness to slap down Biden administration policies, which may come into play again over the next two years.
Biden has taken up arms in recent weeks about threats the GOP poses on everything from the economy to democracy. In one example, he noted how Social Security, long considered the untouchable third rail of American politics, was seeing a payment boost to keep up with inflation and implied that Republicans threaten it.
“Congressional Republicans’ agenda, on the other hand, is very different,” the president wrote. “It would drive up inflation and add to the deficit by cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans and large corporations. And it would raise the cost of prescription drugs, healthcare, and energy for American families.”
In just two months, Biden could find himself trying to work with the same GOPers he’s been warning about.
Bill Clinton could be a good model to follow in this respect, argues Greenberg. Losing the House in the 1994 “Contract with America” midterm elections, Clinton found common ground with the congressional majority and won a relatively easy reelection in 1996.
“There’s a temptation in the moment of the midterms to say the current trajectory will continue,” he said. “History suggests that at least as frequently as there are changes in the weather, there are changes in political and economic situations. The outcome of the midterms won’t necessarily spell doom for him in 2024 the way some people suggest.”
With the war in Ukraine front and center and China-Taiwan relations a lingering question, Biden may find more bipartisanship than expected if foreign policy remains at the forefront over the next two years.
But in such a highly polarized and partisan environment, he may run into trouble both with Republicans and his own party’s progressive wing if he treks too far toward the center.
Republicans have promised congressional investigations into Hunter Biden and the origins of COVID-19, along with a different direction for the Jan. 6 committee, though many voters may already have their minds made up on each of those issues.
Perhaps the biggest question once the midterm elections are over will be when, or if, Joe Biden announces a run for reelection in 2024.
“If he doesn’t make an announcement by the State of the Union speech in January, the only conversation for the entirety of 2023 will be when does he say he’s not running,” said David Garrow, a historian who wrote a book about the Obama presidency and who predicts Joe Biden will bow out of trying for a second term.
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Craig Shirley, a conservative presidential historian who has written several books about Ronald Reagan, thinks the president will be extremely limited over the next two years, especially if the GOP takes the Senate along with the House.
“It would mean the effective end of Biden’s presidency and the beginning of the 2024 presidential campaign,” said Shirley. “The Constitution gives the president very few powers anyway. Most of the power is of the bully pulpit. But after Tuesday, nobody’s going to be listening to him.”
