Why Democrats Need to Care About Who Would Succeed Elizabeth Warren

Gov. Charlie Baker (R-MA) with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

It is November 10, 2020.  A week after the elections, Sen. Thom Tillis has conceded the close race in North Carolina to State Sen. Cal Cunningham, having lost to Cunningham by just over 5,000 votes.  Though a tight race, Tillis is foregoing a recount as it seems unlikely the election needle will be moved enough to get him a win.  He was swept out while President-Elect Elizabeth Warren was also taking the state, a feat she accomplished while also taking Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Michigan away from President Trump's 2016 column, giving her a slim victory that didn't really emulate the 4 million-vote popular vote margin that she picked up across the country.  Warren yesterday morning finally received a congratulations call from Vice President Mike Pence, conceding the election (President Trump, who has not made a public address since election night, has been tweeting conspiracy theories but privately had been encouraged by the vice president as well as senior cabinet officials that he cannot pursue legal action against Warren).  Warren's victory came with the Democrats holding the House, aided by a net pickup of four House seats in Texas that offset incumbents losing in South Carolina, Minnesota, & Utah, and it also helped her party to win not only Tillis's seat but also score surprisingly easy victories over Sens. Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, and Martha McSally.  She wasn't able to translate a slim victory in Iowa into a defeat of Joni Ernst, and Doug Jones still lost in Alabama, but these victories would have resulted in a 50/50 senate that Vice President Julian Castro would have been able to break, giving the Democrats the majority, but Warren's Senate seat will be staying in Republican hands after Gov. Charlie Baker announced that he will appoint his lieutenant governor, Karyn Polito, into the seat instead.  Polito has stated that while she doesn't agree with him on issues like gay marriage and abortion, she will still back Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and hopes to be a "moderating voice on McConnell, bringing Massachusetts values to the US Senate." This will guarantee McConnell briefly a majority in the first few months of the Warren presidency.

It is April 20, 2021.  Last night, in a staggering upset, interim-Senator Karyn Polito won a special election for the former seat of President Elizabeth Warren.  Warren's first 100 days in office have been a mixture of successes and failures.  She has been able to issue major executive actions on gun control and fixing the wage gap, but her cabinet is only half full thanks to Senate Majority Leader McConnell refusing to confirm her nominees to Treasury, Justice, Labor, and the EPA, stating they are "too liberal, and he must respect 'the will of the people' who made him Majority Leader."  Warren's presidency has largely been overshadowed by a sluggish economy, a lingering result of the Trump tariffs some of which are still in effect due to Warren's refusal to budge on human rights conditions in China, and international aggression from Russia & North Korea.  Combined with an exceptionally aggressive primary between two upstart Democrats in Massachusetts (Reps. Joe Kennedy & Ayanna Pressley) and a late April special election with low turnout, Polito was able to cobble together a victory coalition similar to that she enjoyed during her runs alongside Charlie Baker, ultimately winning the office by less than a percentage point.  When asked for comment, McConnell stated, "even her own state doesn't support Ms. Warren anymore," continuing his public trend of not referring to the president as "President Warren."  Privately, McConnell has been encouraging other rank-and-file Republicans to echo this line of attack, and seems emboldened to work as little with the White House as possible.  This could result in a huge standoff amid rumors that Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be retiring at the end of this session, and McConnell appears unlikely to let any of Warren's judicial nominees have a hearing.

It is now present day, and we're getting to the point of these two speculative news snippets.  These are not far-fetched scenarios.  Low approval ratings for President Trump & a waning economy give Democrats hope that they could, in fact, take both the White House and the Senate come 2021, particularly by picking up NC/ME/CO/AZ and only losing Alabama.  But this only results in a tie if the Democrats don't have to lose a Senate seat to get there, and with two major primary candidates, this is a problem.  Both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders hale from states with Republican governors, so if they are part of a successful presidential ticket, they will likely be replaced by a Republican senator.  I say likely, because Vermont has a gubernatorial election in 2020, and were Sanders to be on the Democratic ticket, it's probable that Gov. Phil Scott could lose solely because he'd replace Sanders with a Republican; Scott's term would end on January 7, 2021, and since Sanders' hypothetical term as president wouldn't start until January 20th, 2021, he could just wait to resign from the Senate until after Scott left office.  Warren doesn't have this luxury, as Massachusetts's governor doesn't leave office until 2023.  Every other sitting senator running for POTUS on the Democratic side this year (Michael Bennet, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, & Amy Klobuchar) comes from a state with a Democratic governor, so there's no concern over whether they would be giving a seat to a Republican.  So this is a situation unique to Warren (and to a lesser degree Bernie Sanders).

I'm going to make the argument here that this should matter, and is perhaps the biggest issue I have with Warren's candidacy for president.  The Democrats won't get anything of signficance done during the first 100 days of Warren's presidency if they don't have the Senate (this is true in general of all candidates, which is why I've focused my political donations on congressional candidates so far, rather than just giving to presidential candidates), and giving the Republicans the advantage of her seat is a big deal.  Some Democrats will quickly protest that a Democrat will easily win a Senate seat in Massachusetts, but history would beg to differ.

Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL), Attorney General Jeff Sessions (R-AL),
and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL)

Since 1976, 12 sitting senators have resigned to either become president, vice president, or a member of the new president's administration.  They include one president (Barack Obama), four vice presidents (Walter Mondale, Dan Quayle, Al Gore, & Joe Biden), six cabinet secretaries (Ed Muskie, Lloyd Bentsen, Ken Salazar, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, & Jeff Sessions) and one ambassador (Max Baucus).  Most of these vacancies occurred during the presidency of Barack Obama.  Obama appointed four sitting senators to his administration (along with Joe Biden), while Presidents Carter, Clinton, & Trump only appointed one (to date).  What should be startling to Democrats is how many of these seats eventually went to the other party.

Of these 12 seats, it's worth noting that none of the seats initially went to the Republicans the way that Warren's would.  While the party has nominated senators who would have given up their seat to the other side (Joe Lieberman in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, for example), none of them have actually won in the past 40 years.  You have to go back to 1974, when President Nixon appointed William Saxbe as Attorney General, and the Republican Saxbe was succeeded by the Democratic Howard Metzenbaum to find the last time a party willingly gave up a Senate seat.  This is telling perhaps because of the 12 people I name-checked above, six of those seats ended up going to the Republicans in the next election; at least two more would have been pickups had the Republicans not screwed up by nominating Tea Party candidates (Biden & Salazar).  This includes people from states that the president had just won by a landslide (Obama in Illinois, Sessions in Alabama, Mondale in Minnesota).  The realities of the first two years of a presidential term is that it frequently results in the opposite party being unpopular, and strange things like a Republican winning in Illinois or a Democrat taking Alabama start to occur.  Suffice it to say, a Republican winning Massachusetts in a special election isn't far-fetched, and Warren knows this better than anyone-she won her seat from Sen. Scott Brown, who was only in office because he took a special election upset during the early days of Barack Obama's presidency.

Ultimately Warren shouldn't be totally disqualified from being the Democratic nominee because her seat would go red immediately, and potentially stay there.  If she's truly the best candidate, it'd theoretically be worth it to have her beat Trump.  But as there is no polling to indicate she's the only candidate to beat Trump (quite the contrary), it's worth remembering that beating Mitch McConnell is just as important as besting Donald Trump if you actually want climate change, gun control, and judicial nominees to pass through the Senate.  Yes, someone like Harris, Klobuchar, or Booker would face a similar sort of issue in 2022 with their replacements potentially losing during the midterms, but at least we would have had two years of a Senate majority if the Democrats get their net three seats, and with that most of the legislation/judicial appointments would have likely already happened.  Warren surely would downplay this, but one could make the argument that she didn't do enough in 2018 to beat Baker to prevent this problem, and doesn't appear ready to coax the Massachusetts state legislature to change the law to emulate Arizona or Wyoming (where she'd be required to be replaced with someone of the same party).  Unless she pulls something like this off, with Warren you are casting a vote against Donald Trump, but you're also casting a vote for Mitch McConnell, and that's not something any Democrat should take likely, even if it feels weird to think that a vote for one of the most progressive candidates in the race is a vote for one of the left's most ardent nemeses.