The 2020 elections saw the Democrats pick up the Presidency, lose seats in the House, and have less than a 25% chance of a trifecta if they manage to win both seats in Georgia according to PaddyPower.
In this most likely scenario, with a Democratic President and House along a Republican Senate, how should Democrats govern?
Well, if you look at the last two years we have of course had a Republican President and Senate along with a Democratic House. The House did not pass bills to the Senate, preferring to negotiate with them behind close doors before passing them in their own chamber, and as a result only one stimulus was passed at the beginning of the epidemic and there has been endless deadlock.
Even worse, the Democrats lost 10 seats in the House this year, and with 222 seats have only 4 more than the 218 required for a majority. If they lose 5 more seats to Republicans, the Republicans will have control of the House of Representatives.
On top of that, several vulnerable Republicans kept their seats, putting the Democratic Trifecta in jeopardy.
All of this after a year of deadlock, epidemic, and recession. Even though Joe Biden won a majority of the vote, he will most likely have to work with Republicans for at least the first half of his term.
Putting this into perspective, Washington State this year has had a Democratic Trifecta for only 3 years. In 2018 we saw a massive Democratic landslide and we saw very important bills be passed regarding health care and environmental protection, most notably making Washington the first state to have a public option. After this, the Democrats further increased their margin in the Washington State legislature after a very productive time in the legislature. This is the same state where the Republicans controlled the state legislature for most of the 2010s and the 2004 gubernatorial election was determined by only 133 votes.
The moral of the story is, when Democrats fight, Democrats win.