The then-impending Republican takeover of the Senate “is excellent news for Democrats,” Bill Scher of the Campaign for America’s Future opined in a Politico piece two months ago. His prediction—with which we had some fun at the time—was that the new majority, combined with the prospect of a wide-open race for the presidential nomination, would heighten Republican divisions: “Instead of another two years of the same old gridlock that has turned voters off of both parties, Democrats will get to kick back with a large tub of buttery popcorn and watch the Republican soap opera hit peak suds.”
The New Congress won’t take office until January, so Scher’s forecast has yet to be tested. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank holds out hope that Scher will be proved correct: “There will be many . . . tensions within the new GOP majority—and Democrats should be exploiting those.” But for now, he observes, it is the Democrats who are “having an intraparty food fight.”
Or as The Wall Street Journal puts it in a news story today: “Long-muted tensions within the Democratic Party over policy and strategy are beginning to surface publicly, a sign of leaders looking beyond President Barack Obama ’s tenure in the aftermath of the party’s midterm election defeat.”
One point of disagreement arose Tuesday, when “the White House surprised Democratic leaders in the Senate by threatening to veto a tax package negotiated by both parties. The White House said the deal would help’“well-connected corporations while neglecting working families.’ ’’
Another “flashpoint,” according to the Journal, is immigration: “Some House Democrats believe it was a mistake for Mr. Obama to wait until after the midterm elections to take executive action limiting deportations, a delay that the president agreed to at the behest of Senate Democratic leaders trying to protect vulnerable incumbents.” As we noted in September, administration officials touted the delay as a way of deceiving red-state voters into re-electing Democratic senators. It didn’t work: Four red-state Democrats were defeated on Election Day; the fifth, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, isn’t expected to make it past a Dec. 6 runoff.