Budowsky: How Dems can lead the nation from the midterms into 2024

After the midterm elections of 2022, which witnessed the great disappearing red wave, the historical reputation of President Biden will continue to rise, and the stage is set for Democrats to lead the nation from now through the 2024 elections. 

As President Biden travels the nation and world, he will be viewed as a president who achieved very real and important policy accomplishments during his first two years. He will be viewed as a president who united the democratic alliance against Russian aggression and fiercely defended democracy at home. He will be known forever as a president who achieved among the most successful midterm elections for a first-term president while the national and world economies were severely challenged. 

The full and final results of the midterm elections will not be known for several days, at least. While Democrats have a fairly good chance of retaining control of the Senate, and Republicans are most likely to win control of the House, neither of these results is certain.  

But one thing is. 

Whichever party controls the House and Senate will do so with a small majority, at a time when a significant majority of the nation is fed up with national division, bitter partisanship, political violence and threats, and the repeated and aggressive denials of election results by hyperpartisans who attack the very process of the right to vote and the peaceful transfer of power that are at the heart and soul of democracy. 

On Election Day, voters rejected Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol; a former president who treats opponents as enemies, including Republicans; those who refuse the peaceful transfer of power; those who bring weapons to intimidate those who are voting; and Supreme Court justices who deny decades of precedent for women exercising the right of choice, on a highly unpopular court that seems determined to act like an ultra-conservative super-legislature.  

Voters rejected House Republicans who wage political war against other Republicans and refuse to negotiate with Democrats. What could have been a wave became, at best, a trickle. If there is a Republican House Speaker, the conference will be ungovernable, turning the House into a den of partisan investigations and gridlock. This is exactly what voters do not want. 

As final votes are counted in coming days, Congress will begin a lame-duck session. And next year, the new Congress will be sworn in, with small majorities in both Houses under whomever has control. 

There is a great moment of opportunity for President Biden and Democratic leaders to offer what most voters want: honest and fair compromise, where both sides give a little. This has reasonable prospects in the Senate and the still-Democratic House during the lame-duck session. It will still have some prospects in the Senate next year, if House Republicans have a small majority. This interplay will continue into the 2024 presidential election.  

If there is a Republican Speaker with a small majority, he or she will be faced with internal division from a small circle of House Republicans who are far outside the mainstream of American political life. If Biden and Democratic leaders offer fair compromises that help voters in ways that voters understand, they will be richly rewarded politically — and if Republicans refuse, they will be punished, as they were this week. 

Biden should work with Democratic governors such as Gavin Newsom of California, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Tony Evers of Wisconsin, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Kathy Hochul of New York and incoming Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland. 

This strategy would perfectly position Democrats to lead before, during and after the 2024 presidential campaign. 

Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), who was chief deputy majority whip of the House of Representatives.