Election results blunt threat of a left-leaning Senate agenda

While four Senate races remain undecided, two lean toward Republicans. At best, Democrats next year would control the U.S. Senate with 50 votes, plus the tie-breaking vote of the presumptive vice president, Kamala Harris.

The thin margin is not enough to enact a sweeping agenda that would include eliminating the filibuster and packing the Supreme Court, as many liberals had been hoping for.

“That’s crazy talk,” Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, said when Democrats returned to the Capitol on Monday.

While Manchin and other Democrats have long staked out their opposition to eliminating the filibuster, other Democrats called for its elimination before the election. But without a more significant majority, it’s likely to go nowhere.

“Even if Democrats do regain the majority, there will not be the votes necessary to eliminate the filibuster,” said Jim Manley, who served as a senior aide to former Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat. “There are a handful of Democrats strongly opposed to such a move.”

No matter how the outstanding Senate races are decided, Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, is poised to remain leader of his party in the Senate.

He’ll be tasked with determining the direction of the Democratic agenda after disappointing election results that some in the party have blamed on the liberal wish list promoted by prominent members of the party, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat who called for defunding the police, eliminating immigration and customs officers, and packing the Supreme Court.

“We as a party are going to have another debate about where we are going as a party, and I, for one, have no problems with that,” Manley told the Washington Examiner. “But we didn’t do as well as we could have last week, and that is a problem.”

Ocasio-Cortez has attacked lawmakers who blame losses on the far-left agenda.

“The blind impulse to blame activists and the left both demoralizes a key constituency and distracts from asking real Qs & fixing serious operational issues,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, blaming consultants for losses in swing districts.

“There are swing seat Dem incumbents who cosponsored the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, etc and if I’m not mistaken every single one won re-election,” she added.

In interviews Monday, Senate Democrats did not talk of passing any of the far-left proposals supported by Ocasio-Cortez and instead talked of passing infrastructure reform, job-producing climate change measures, and a coronavirus aid package.

“We want to save this planet,” Sen. Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat, told the Washington Examiner. “And we can do that in ways that create a lot of jobs and do good things for our health and the economy.”

Schumer never promised to eliminate the filibuster if Democrats win back the Senate majority. But he didn’t rule it out either, telling reporters it was an option he would discuss after the election.

Now, Democrats are destined for the minority unless they can win both Georgia Senate seats in a January runoff.

Schumer, celebrating Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential race in Brooklyn on Saturday, told a jubilant crowd, “Now, we take Georgia, then we change the world.”

But a slim Democratic majority would be hobbled by the 60-vote threshold required to pass legislation.

Unless the party could pressure holdout Senate Democrats to vote to eliminate the filibuster with a simple majority, Republicans will vote to block almost any Democratic agenda item on the liberal wish list, including dozens of bills passed by a Democratic House majority that will be reintroduced in January and sent to the Senate.

Carper said Democrats should not completely eliminate the possibility of voting to scrap the filibuster. Especially if they need it to pass legislation that is critical to the party.

“I think we keep it in our hip pocket, make sure the Republicans know it’s there,” Carper told the Washington Examiner.