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Even as Democrats celebrate their retaining of the Senate by winning 50 seats and reducing the margin in the House, US President Joe Biden faces innumerable challenges in the remaining two years of his term with which the Senate coincides and over 1400 key appointments of his hang in the balance to courts, cabinet, legislatures and ambassadors.
The US Media, which predicted largely a ‘Red Wave’ under former President Donald Trump against inflation, is now changing its tune and calling Biden’s retention of the Senate and narrowing losses in the House of Representatives, as a Blue Tsunami that was not a referendum on the President’s governance or economic policies, but more about Trump and his choice of “racist and extreme right wing” candidates.
“Democrats are celebrating their retention of the Senate as their singular victory and rejection of GOP’s right wing extremism,” the said in a report.
Democrats on Sunday celebrated retaining their majority in the Senate after Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) was reelected, even as they were not sure they could retain control of the House having won just 204 seats against 212 of the Republicans. Catherine’s victory got the vital 50th Senate seat for Democrats and quashed Republican hopes of retaking control of both chambers of Congress, as many had predicted in the weeks leading up to Election Day, media reports said.
“When far-right Republicans said they knew better, I knew we would prove them wrong,” Cortez Masto said in a victory speech Sunday after winning the vital Nevada seat. With the Senate runoff in Georgia next month between Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) and Republican Herschel Walker, Democrats have a chance to pick up a 51st seat, a stunning feat in a midterm election year that typically does not favour the party in power.
Biden has lost just 11 seats in the Congress against Trump’s 40, Clinton’s 50 and Obama’s 63 in the November midterms, a rare feat. Yet both Obama and Clinton won their 2nd term in office in the White House.
The Georgia seat is of utmost importance to the Democrats, which they are likely to win on December 6, because that win would ensure that Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D) does not have to enter into a power sharing agreement with the Republicans and can get Biden to confirm his judicial appointments to different courts after being reelected as the Senate majority leader.
