Bipartisan bummer

“Anything that comes out of Pelosi's House, it’ll come to the Senate and we’ll kill it dead.”

That’s how Sen. Lindsey Graham sought to motivate Republican voters in the days leading up to the 2021 Georgia runoffs that were then set to determine control of the U.S. Senate. It didn’t work: In two of the most consequential down-ballot elections in decades, Democrats swept both races, reordering Joe Biden’s presidency literally overnight.

Now, nearly four years later, the vision articulated by Graham — a Republican Senate all but grinding an incoming Democratic president’s hopes to a halt — is suddenly relevant again, this time with a new layer: Even in the majority, Democrats may face significant challenges in moving legislation through the Senate.

Publicly, Democrats continue to dream of the 2024 elections returning them to unified control of government. Vice President Kamala Harris’s moves this week embodied that approach: After reaffirming her support for carving out an exception to the filibuster to “codify Roe v. Wade,” she declined in an interview to even entertain what a GOP Senate would mean for her economic agenda. But increasingly, that looks like what may be facing her if her campaign is successful.

With Republicans virtually guaranteed to gain retiring Sen. Joe Manchin’s seat and now posting a widening lead over endangered Montana Sen. Jon Tester, they are increasingly favored to take control of the upper chamber (This was perhaps the calculation behind Senate Democrats’ campaign arm announcing new spending in the longshot Florida and Texas Senate races on Thursday). The landscape adds up to a daunting path for Democrats: Even if they prevail in the (still) tossup races for the presidency and control of the House of Representatives, Harris is increasingly likely to enter office with Republicans in control of the Senate.

That would almost certainly end any chance of Congress enacting the kinds of sweeping changes Democrats have campaigned on in recent years, from “codifying Roe v. Wade” to universal child care. But the problem posed by the Senate to a potential Harris presidency could run even deeper: Whether in the majority or minority, the GOP Senate caucus next year will be distinctly different from the one President Biden collaborated with on several major bipartisan achievements.

Twenty-seven Republican senators backed the Democratic position on at least one of five major votes during Biden’s presidency: Donald Trump’s second impeachment, the infrastructure package, a mental health and gun control bill, the CHIPS Act, and the Respect for Marriage Act. An analysis of their trajectory the past few years paints a potentially grim picture for future collaboration. Of the ten GOP senators who most often voted with Democrats, five will be gone from the chamber come next year — all but one of them replaced by a more conservative successor.

A look at specific legislation makes it clear just how much the ground has changed. Five of the 17 Republican senators who voted for the CHIPS Act, four of the 19 who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, five of the 15 who voted for the gun control and mental health package after Uvalde, and four of the 12 who voted for the Respect for Marriage Act will have departed the chamber come January.

Perhaps just as key: Of the remaining Republican collaborators, a majority are up for re-election in the 2026 midterms — potentially creating a strong incentive structure for many to avoid collaboration with a Democratic president. Only two, Maine’s Susan Collins and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, hail from blue or purple states, leaving a large group of red state senators likely to be primarily concerned by backlash and potential primary challenges from the right.

While the upheaval is particularly acute on the Republican side, it’s part of a broader erosion of the Senate’s ideological middle from which Biden’s bipartisan achievements emerged. The 2021 infrastructure deal, arguably the central legislative achievement of Biden’s presidency and the first in a string of bipartisan achievements that even many of his supporters initially doubted were possible, was primarily negotiated by a group of ten senators. The smiling photos the group posed for encapsulate the group’s decline: Four of those pictured — Manchin, Rob Portman, Mitt Romney, and Kyrsten Sinema — have retired, with a fifth, Tester, considered increasingly unlikely to return. 

Of this group, Sinema’s retirement could be particularly significant: For all the ire she has provoked among Democrats, she was at the center of nearly every bipartisan achievement of the Biden presidency. And unlike Manchin, with whom she was often grouped, she is considered to have been a crucial player in the bills’ passage, with a particular adeptness at bringing Republican senators onboard her priorities. While her departure could open new avenues the next time Democrats are in the majority — Arizona Democrats’ Senate nominee this year, Rep. Ruben Gallego, has promised to join efforts to nuke the filibuster — a Republican majority could be a reminder of the role she played as a bipartisan bridge.

Together, the departure of both Republican negotiators and their Democratic conduits could pose a significant challenge for Harris, whose victory could now very well make history in another way: If she wins the presidency while her party loses the Senate, she would be the first Democratic president since Grover Cleveland to enter office without full control of D.C. 

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