After an election in which the country opted for a reset, not a revolution, moderate
                                              Democrats hold the power in the party.
                                                                                                  Sullivan and Bade

The momentum of the 2018 Congressional midterm elections in which the Democrats gained 42 seats and regained their majority status in the House of Representatives lost steam in 2020. It had been expected that the 2020 elections would build on the 2018 victories and possibly lead to capturing the Senate.

The anticipated blue wave broke badly, never making it onto Congressional shores. It is destined to profoundly impact the abilities of the Biden White House and Democratic Congres-sional leaders to take the bold steps needed to slow and then reduce net greenhouse gas emissions in the power sector to zero over the next 15 years.

Although the House remains in Democratic hands, fewer hands are doing the holding. The election losses have led to recriminations and heated discussions between moderate and progressive House Democrats. The who’s right/who’s wrong arguments have spilled out into the activist communities—with each faction accusing the other.

Beyond the shock, awe, and recriminations of losing 13 House seats, the narrowed Democratic House majority poses practical strategic difficulties for Speaker Pelosi and the Biden administration. The Democrats will go into the 117th Congress with 222 seats House seats—just four more than the 218 needed to pass most legislation.

                                                              Other arms reach out to me
                                                         And other eyes will smile tenderly
                                                            Still, in peaceful dreams, I see
                                                               The road leads back to you

                                                                                       Hoagy Carmichael / Stuart Gorell

We, the people, fired the nation’s chief executive long about a month ago. The order is scheduled to be confirmed by a vote of the Electoral College on December 14, 2020. It will then come due on January 20, 2021, when Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th President of the United States.

The College’s vote will finalize the election of Joe Biden. It will not, however, bring an end to the 2020 election cycle. There is a critical step still to be taken for that to happen.

On January 5, 2021, Georgia voters will again be casting ballots to fill both of its US Senate seats. The outcome of the Peach State’s balloting is second in importance only to November’s presidential contest. In fact, some political veterans have dubbed Georgia’s Senate races the most consequential runoff in American history in terms of shifting the balance of power in Washington.

I don’t often have an opportunity to agree with Newt Gingrich. The former House Speaker has seen—from inside political circles— many elections come and go.  I am willing, therefore, to defer to his superior experience in this matter.

                     Defund the police? Defund my butt. I’m a proud West Virginia Democrat.
                                               We do not have some crazy socialist agenda. 

                                                                                                    Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV)
Introduction

President-Elect Biden ran as a unifier in a time of deep division. His job as president has been made all the more difficult by voters having denied the Democrats control of Congress.

The last president who entered his first-term without his party in control of Congress was George H. W. Bush in 1989. The last Democrat who suffered the same fate was Grover Cleveland in 1885. Same party control of Congress is no guarantee of smooth sailing for a president—divisions within parties are common and frequently acted upon.

Midterm elections are historically harmful to a sitting president. According to Politifact, a sitting president’s party has on average lost 32 House seats and more than two Senate seats in midterm elections since 1862. The only presidents to beat the odds were Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934, Bill Clinton in 1998, and George W. Bush in 2002.

Introduction

The 2020 elections are almost history. What’s left are the Georgia Senate runoff elections in January, and President Trump running out of brows to beat, and judges willing to indulge his unsubstantiated claims.

Biden’s election means a presidential assault on the nation’s environmental protection framework is coming to an end. The President-Elect has vowed to build it back better than before. To do that, he will need to convince a conflicted government to cooperate with him. It may prove a more daunting task than winning the presidency.

Climate activists thought that 2020 would be the year when voters finally provided clear and unambiguous support for an encompassing climate defense plan and the lawmakers who would put it into action. It was a year in which politics and science both took center stage.

The spread of COVID-19 has provided daily news reminders, in the form of infection rates and body counts, of the consequences of ignoring sound scientific advice. Contagion-borne illnes-ses we know are made worse by pollution—especially for the elderly and those with compro-mised immune systems.