Absence of Mandate

In her Wall Street Journal column Kimberley Strassel makes a significant observation:

The president has repeatedly claimed a mandate for action despite knowing better. Even with the Democratic Party’s twin Georgia runoff victories in January, it ended the election with a 50-50 Senate and the narrowest Democratic House majority since before the New Deal. The prudent course would have been to govern from the middle, working with Republicans on incremental change.

Democrats instead decided to “go big” with a strategy that had no margin for error and relied on two big bets. First, that they could juke or blow up the Senate rules to get around the 60-vote filibuster. Second, that they could force or cajole every member of their razor-thin majority to adopt one of the most progressive agendas in U.S. history.

Joe Biden had a single clear mandate: not to be Donald Trump. In that he has been successful. Last week the first alternative noted by Ms. Strassel was vetoed by the Senate parliamentarian. Whether the Democrats can “force or cajole” a majority of their caucus to vote for the administration’s agenda remains to be seen. It may well prove the case that the Congressional leadership will need to cultivate skills that nothing in their backgrounds has granted them experience with: compromise, moderation, and consensus-building.