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If Democrats lose to this gang of democracy-wrecking, conspiracy-addled Republicans in next week's midterm elections, as looks increasingly likely from polling, it's going to hurt. But Democratic leaders will need to dust themselves off and remember that American government still features an inexplicable two-month period after general elections during which the outgoing government gets to continue making policy. And unless Democrats want to live through a miserable and economically ruinous two years that end with a post-election coup in 2024, they will have to lick their wounds and get back to work.
Defeated governments have been reluctant to jam through consequential, controversial legislation in these so-called lame-duck periods, for good reason: having removed a party from power, it is reasonable for voters to expect lame-duck governments to behave as caretakers rather than changemakers. It's one of the reasons that then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rushed the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in October 2020—he didn't want the optics of having a Senate majority that the electorate just deposed making such an important decision.
Yet for the better part of 30 years, Republicans have also been guided by a simple principle: Use the power you have, no matter how norm-violating the behavior. Unless a maneuver is explicitly prohibited by the Constitution, it is fair game if it helps achieve GOP policy goals. And passing important laws during lame-duck sessions is perfectly legal. This year, Republican leaders are promising to use their majorities, should they win them, to play debt-ceiling chicken with President Biden and Democratic leaders until they swerve and agree to cuts in popular social programs like Social Security.
Top Republicans aren't being subtle about their willingness to precipitate this hostage situation. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said that "We're not just going to keep lifting your credit card limit, right?" Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), a possible chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, told Axios that the party plans to send massive spending cuts to President Biden. "If we were trying to bring down inflation ... trying to secure our border, surely he wouldn't default," Smith said.
During the Obama era, Republican leaders who delighted in brinkmanship still weren't quite willing to "shoot the hostage" by triggering default. But those Republicans, as radical as many of them were about reducing the size of government, have largely been replaced by MAGA performance artists, Trump stooges, and violence-worshipping influencers who would take great delight in wearing "I shoot hostages" shirts onto the House floor as they deliberately send America's economy into an uncontrolled vertical spin. Moments later they would send fundraising emails to their followers bragging about it.
Still, some leading Democrats cannot bring themselves to believe that Republicans would go through with letting the U.S. default on its debt, a potentially catastrophic fiasco that could collapse banks and investment funds, destroy the value of the dollar and trigger a steep recession. One of those Democrats is President Biden, who said it would be "irresponsible" to eliminate the debt ceiling. This is like if someone explicitly threatened to shoot you in the chest, but you decided that wearing a bullet-proof vest would antagonize your assailant.
Thankfully, Democrats in Congress appear to be exploring the possibility of using reconciliation, which would do an end-run around the Senate's filibuster rule, to raise the debt ceiling. That's a great start, but they also have to coup-proof democracy on their way out.
The archaic and loophole-ridden Electoral Count Act of 1887 is the reason that former President Donald Trump and his henchmen were able to bring the United States to the brink of authoritarianism in the months following the 2020 election. This year, a bipartisan group of senators worked out legislation that among other things, would raise the threshold for objecting to electoral votes, clarify that the vice president has only a ceremonial role in the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress that certifies the election result and creates an expedited judicial review process in the event that rogue, election-denying governors of the type that voters seem on the precipice of electing in Wisconsin and Arizona decide to send alternate electors to Washington.
But while the Senate's bill had 11 Republican co-sponsors, Democrats shouldn't count on their cooperation if a red wave delivers one or both chambers to the GOP. At that point, a successful version of Trump's democracy-ending plot will be tantalizingly within reach, and the pressure on Senate Republicans to filibuster the reform will be enormous. It's already happening.
Democrats need to connect the dots here. The more Republicans can use economic warfare to turn the public against the Biden administration, the easier it will be to pull off the theft of the 2024 election. A bitter, impoverished electorate will be much easier to cow into submission, and without additional legislative guardrails there won't be anyone to stop the GOP from snuffing out American democracy once and for all.
That should be reason enough to risk ruffling some feathers by passing big, important laws after the election, but doing nothing and watching helplessly as it all slips away would also be very much on brand for these Democrats.
David Faris is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. His writing has appeared in The Week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Washington Monthly and more. You can find him on Twitter @davidmfaris.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
