I thought the DEMOCRATS won. What's happened?

Why do Republicans still seem to have the upper hand?

Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t the Democrats win the White House, secure a tie-breaking majority in the Senate, and hold onto a slim lead in the House of Representatives in last November’s election? If they did, then why does it sometimes seem like the Republicans in Washington are holding the cards? On economic recovery, on gun reform, on climate change, even on an investigation about the insurrection on January 6th.

The questions are better than the answers.

Part of the problem, part of the reason why Republicans still hold those cards is, Democrats aren’t scared like Republicans are. I don’t mean scared of the troubles that threaten our security and our stability. I mean scared of Donald Trump. Trump’s hold on most Republicans, in the halls of Congress and on the streets of America, is inexplicable to the rest of us. But to parrot the paramount truism of the 21st Century, it is what it is. The fact is, the Democrats don’t have anyone like Trump, no one willing to threaten their careers if they don’t toe the line, no one willing to live in a moral morass. That’s to their credit of course, but also to their detriment, because they won’t get into the gutter to win. This crop of Republicans will.

Another part of the problem is, the Republicans claim they’ve got the Big Tent, but theirs these days is a one-cot cottage. Just ask Lynn Cheney. It’s the Democrats who have the Big Tent right now, and different factions are all trying to get not just the ear but the endorsement of President Joe Biden. Like the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Moderates lobbied Biden to give Israel the benefit of the doubt. Progressives lobbied him to give Israel the boot. He’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. When Democrats aren’t unified, Republicans are winning.

Yet another problem is the procedures of the United States Senate. Although the body is split 50/50 between the two political parties, most legislation requires passage by 60 of its 100 members. So unless ten brave Republicans defy their lockstep leadership and defect to a Democratic priority, almost any bill is dead in the water. That’s what’s shaping up right now for a January 6th fact-finding investigation. These days, it might be easier to get ten family-value Republicans to streak across the Senate floor than to support a family-lifting bill the Democrats introduce.

It is not enough to point out that the Senate’s 50 Democrats represent 40-million-plus more Americans than the 50 Republicans do. Not as long as those 60 votes are required. With the spread of voter suppression laws from one Republican-dominated state to another— which is existential to the very definition of democracy— the only remedy is to end the 60-vote filibuster, which would then allow laws to pass with a simple majority, and give the preponderance of the American people an actual voice in the well-being of this nation. If Democrats can’t pass a federal law that supersedes the suppression in those states, the Republicans will keep corrupting the Constitution, and winning.

Then there’s the Republican leadership itself. Even those hypocrites who briefly have shown some spine and condemned Trump’s unpatriotic, anti-democratic, even seditious conduct, put their fingers in the wind and found that it was too cold to stay outside. So even if some still don’t sing the man’s praises— I’m looking at you, Mitch McConnell— they are once again doing his bidding. And sometimes winning.

Never in American history has a loser like Trump— ousted from the Oval Office after only one term and never having reached approval ratings as high as even 50%— continued to hold a noose over his party’s neck long after he slinked into exile. The rest of us can moan ’til doomsday about the cult this man has created, but when you see polls showing that the majority of Republican voters still believe his flagrant lie about a fraudulent election, doomsday only seems closer. As historian Helen Cox Richardson put it, “The Republican Party is radicalizing into a pro-Trump force that is throwing the country under the bus to defend their leader.”

The people driving the Republican Party today are willing to rewrite history. They are willing to bury principle. They are willing to crush the truth. And for what? Not to win some legislative victories, but to stop the Democrats from winning any themselves. McConnell said it without a hint of abashment early this month: “One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration.” That’s his idea of winning. The longer he and his party pursue this shameless strategy, the deeper they sink this nation into a rabbit hole and the harder it will be to climb out.

Thankfully, with landmark legislation in Joe Biden’s first hundred days, the Democrats have had a few victories themselves. But even with populist policies to put money in people’s pockets and pacify the pandemic and restore the nation’s infrastructure and reverse the worsening climate, they don’t always appear to have the upper hand. It seems that despite winning the last election, they are sometimes beaten by the party that lost it. This is not how representative democracy was meant to work.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks, a political columnist for The Denver Post, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies at home and international crises around the globe. He won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Some of his essays also are published— with images— on a website he co-founded, BoomerCafe.com.