The electoral dust is about settled, and any reasoned verdict holds that this election could have been far, far worse for conservatives. An argument could even be made that the most likely outcome, a Biden presidency checked by a Republican Senate majority, is the best that Republicans could have hoped for considering the long-term implications.
At this point, it is clear to all but the most obdurate partisan that Joe Biden has won the presidency, if only by a few inches in a few states. Meanwhile, Republicans managed to shrink Nancy Pelosi’s House majority to what may become the slimmest in a century and, pending a couple runoff elections in Georgia, retain their majority in the Senate.
The overall picture is not, therefore, all that dark and gloomy. A smaller House majority limits to some extent what Democrats can accomplish there unilaterally. A more originalist Supreme Court can, at long last, reestablish the boundaries of the branches and deny rampant progressivism the long-standing constitutional shortcut it enjoyed through the judiciary.
A Senate majority, if the Republicans can indeed retain it, can legislatively block bad ideas coming from either the House or the administration and temper some of the potentially nuttier and more worrisome presidential appointments.
What the voters have delivered is at least two years of what the Left will decry as gridlock or, as the good folks who pieced together the Constitution might have referred to it, checked and balanced government. In any case, it appears that voters have expressed an appetite for a stalemate, fearing what Democratic hegemony in the age of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could bring about.
The GOP could still mess it up. All political eyes are on the Peach State, as is the full weight of the Democratic Party, desperate as it is to give Biden some breathing room. The two Georgia Senate races are, by most analytical accounts, likely to remain Republican, but that is by no means a given. The Democrats are directing massive spending and a robust ground game to the state.
Republicans, meanwhile, are distracted by a theatrical post-election litigation game with no discernible objective beyond trying to out-do the Democrats’ past four years of hyperventilation and conspiracy theorizing. The Trump campaign’s legal challenges and assertions of systemic election fraud are as baseless as Democratic claims of Russian-orchestrated electoral theft in 2016.
These theatrical legal gymnastics are dangerous, and not just abstractly, in the sense of undermining institutional and constitutional legitimacy. They are dangerous practically for the GOP because they threaten success in the Georgia runoffs. The diversion and sheer pettiness risk turning off Georgia’s voters, especially in the crucial suburbs, who would otherwise be inclined to vote Republican and whose votes are necessary to provide that important senatorial check on Biden.
It’s a pretty important check. A presidential administration, even one handicapped by an opposing Congress, is not impotent. Even with Democratic congressional losses, a Biden administration can do significant harm. Already, the Left is urging Biden to make autocratic use of the executive order. Additionally, the various executive agencies wield an inordinate amount of power, and a Biden-Harris administration welcomes a return to the Obama-era hyper-regulatory state. The philosophical atmospheric change at agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Education, and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will be immediately chilling. In foreign policy is where a president can do the most and most lasting damage.
The Senate cannot do everything but could provide an important block on the liberal legislative agenda, tempering dogmatism in executive appointments. We are already seeing this in some of Biden’s announced Cabinet picks, mainly establishment types who are drawing the ire of the leftist base. He is doing this partly in anticipation of a Republican Senate. A razor-thin Democratic majority there may not be enough to bring about the worst — centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin could become the most powerful person in Washington — but it would certainly loosen the reins on the Harris-Warren-Sanders wing.
There is much good to be said about the restraining function of gridlock. It prevents the alternative, which is impetuous lawmaking that brings social, institutional, and economic harm. Governmental restraint can be the GOP’s gift to the nation this year if the party can muster the discipline to deliver it.
Kelly Sloan (@KVSloan25) is a Denver-based public affairs consultant and columnist.
