Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.
•••
On election night, a lot of Republicans bypassed the Champagne for brown-colored liquor, and they're still feeling surly a few days later. But they shouldn't wallow in disappointment. There's plenty of basis for conservative cheer.
That starts with the record of the Biden administration — really. Yes, conservatives disagree with a great many of the Democrats' policies, and think some the results, such as higher inflation, have been woeful. But consider all of the items on the Democratic agenda that didn't pass in two years of unified party control of Congress and the White House. There's no federal overhaul of voting laws, no expansion of taxpayer funding for abortion and no statutory changes to boost unions.
One might have thought that even a narrow Democratic majority would be able to raise the minimum wage and increase the top income-tax rate. This one hasn't. Even the corporate tax rate has stayed the same as it was under the Trump administration, although its base has broadened.
The Biden Democrats have made fewer permanent changes to the law than their predecessors in the previous two Democratic administrations, those of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. There's no big new program such as Obamacare. What the Democrats have done instead is spend a lot of money. That's not great and restoring spending restraint is never easy. But it's not nearly as difficult as undoing a law.
And while Republicans did much worse than they had expected in the elections, they did well enough that Biden won't be able to enact new liberal legislation in the next two years — not, at least, without giving conservatives something in return.
The legislative picture during the remainder of Biden's term is going to look much the way it would have if the red wave of Republican dreams had materialized. More Republican senators would have meant a slower pace of confirmation for liberal judges, slightly more moderate appointees and somewhat more Republican-friendly budget deals. Wave or ripple, though, liberal initiatives are going to come via executive action. A Republican Senate would have led to more pushback against such moves, but would not have stopped them (any more than it did when Obama faced a Republican Senate in his last two years in office).
