The Article below was published in Vol. 136, Issue 3 of the Lake Forest College Stentor on November 13, 2020.
Nathaniel Bodnar ’21
Staff Writer
Democrats will now face the problem that Republicans faced in 2016; a party that is primarily centered around being the opposition to those in power and that is not united enough to pass a legislative agenda. During the Obama years, the GOP became the party of “NO” and stalled many parts of President Obama’s agenda. During the Trump years, the Democratic party has united around being #TheResistance even as internal division seems to increase. The GOP did not accomplish much legislatively in their two years of having the White House, Senate, and House. The Democrats face a more formidable challenge in their first two years as they will not even have a majority in the Senate.
“Kill it, stop it, slow it down.” —Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)
President Obama had two years with majorities in the House and the Senate. In this period, the Obama administration had its most significant legislative victory—the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. The 2010 midterms were a blow to the Democrats as Tea Party enthusiasm led Republicans to a decisive majority in the House. From this point on until the election of President Trump, the GOP was the part of “NO.”
In 2019, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said that the Tea Party Wave was opposed to Obama achieving legislative successes. In 2014, the Republican-controlled House voted to block Obama’s executive orders on immigration with help from a few Democrats. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) had a 21-hour speech about the need to defund Obamacare. Rand Paul (R-KY) filibustered 13 hours in an attempt to block John Brennan’s nomination as the CIA director. The GOP Senate blocked Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court. In 2014, President Obama said, “So far this year, Republicans in Congress have blocked or voted down every serious idea to strengthen the middle class.” He used the Republican legislators’ refusal to cooperate to bolster his position of avoiding the legislature and acting unilaterally, instead. The GOP significantly reduced the Obama administration’s long-term effects after gaining the House majority in 2010, but that coalition was entirely based on opposition to Obama’s policies and not because of ideological coherence.
#TheResistance to Donald Trump was nowhere near as tactically savvy or successful as the “NO” party. The only thing that the GOP was united on was judges, who were slammed down the Senate Democrats throats. Donald Trump and the GOP Senate confirmed 220 judges and three Supreme Court justices in less than four years, whereas President Obama only confirmed 329 judges in eight years. The GOP accomplished little to nothing legislatively, mainly because the party had little internal unity. The GOP failed to repeal Obamacare while they had control of the House and Senate. One of Trump’s biggest campaign promises, the wall at the southern border, never came to fruition because it lacked support from many people in the GOP.
I foresee a similar fate for the Biden administration. His party was and is united chiefly by the fact that they oppose Trump. Now that Trump has been defeated, they do not have a uniting factor to legislate effectively. Tensions are already high between the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic party. In the 2020 election, the Democrats failed to win the majority in the Senate and have lost over 10 seats in the House (Georgia has two Senate seats going to a run-off election, but the best case for Democrats is that they equal the number of seats the GOP currently hold). The moderates are blaming progressives for this loss, feeling that the far-left rhetoric espoused by progressives is hurting the party as a whole. These divisions will linger and harm the legislative process, not to mention that it will be hard to put through an agenda while a minority party in the Senate. In the words of Dominican friar and priest Fr. Thomas Crean and Alan Fimister, author of Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy, “any ruling group is only able to rule as it is united and not factious.” Unfortunately for Democrats, their internal division and failure to retake the Senate will force the Biden administration to rule through executive edict, as a legislative agenda has little chance of success.
