At this writing it is still undetermined whether Republicans or Democrats will control the House, but one thing is clear: New York Democrats screwed up royally, possibly fatally. They were too clever by half in rejecting the redistricting map created by the Democratic members of the state’s first independent Redistricting Commission. This allowed Jack Martins, chair of the Republican side who strategically refused to compromise on a consensus map, to sue when the Democratic-controlled legislature created its own map designed to compensate for the gerrymandering underway in Texas, Florida and Ohio.
As a result of the ultimate redistricting (that took a seat from downstate where population increased, while keeping the seat upstate where population decreased), Long Island lost the 3rd Congressional District, a seat Democrats have held for 40 years, to a man who supported the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and seemed to think he was running for the New York Legislature rather than the U.S. Congress. The Democrats also lost the 4th CD seat. The defeats were all the more stunning in light of Democratic victories across the country. (Like how the OJ Simpson trial was decided during jury selection.)
And the result will be two years of Republican obstruction of anything and everything President Biden wants to do to address the existential problems facing the nation, endless investigations, likely impeachments.
So now the focus must be on the lame-duck session, as a last ditch effort to get anything done.
The one absolute must-do for Democrats in the lame-duck sessions is to raise the debt ceiling, so that Biden, the nation, and the world cannot be held hostage, extorted by Republicans threatening to crash the nation’s and global economy unless Biden cuts Medicare, privatize Social Security or repeal Obamacare or implement a national abortion ban.
The second is to pass Voting Rights (and before Congress takes up the Electoral Count Act reform, which Republicans are eager to pass to make sure Vice President Kamala Harris can’t do what Trump pressured Pence to do) in order to provide federal minimum standards for elections. Otherwise, Democrats will have no defense against voter suppression, election subversion at the state level (enabled by the SCOTUS6). Without voting rights, which is the foundation for every other right, just as a woman in Texas isn’t as free or equal as a woman in New York, voters of one state would not have equal say in their governance as voters of another state – a violation of 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection. (That is already the case because of the imbalance of Senate representation and the outsized role and abuse of the filibuster, gerrymandering in the House, and the Electoral College, which enshrines minority control.)
The presumption in a country that purports to be a democracy has to be on enabling every eligible voter to cast their ballot and have that vote counted. Consequently, there needs to be minimum federal standards regarding early voting, mail-in-voting and absentee voting; voter registration (you can vote at the last place you were registered if you have not re-registered or unless same-day voter registration is allowed; presently, the rules disadvantage young, mobile voters); and what constitutes Voter ID and how to obtain it.
There must be minimum standards on location and accessibility of polling places, hours, numbers of voting machines, paper ballots and rules for mandated audits to confirm accuracy of the count and tabulation, numbers and accessibility of drop-boxes. You can’t tell people they can vote by mail or absentee and then not count the ballot or reject the ballot without informing the voter and giving opportunity to either “cure” or vote in person; no purging of lists without time for purged voters must be notified and given opportunity to properly register. And there needs to be federal felony penalties for interfering with the vote, including giving false information and voter or election worker intimidation.
Congress should pass the Disclose Act and reform campaign finance rules, which have proved so corrupting (probably the biggest reason for losing New York’s 3rd and 4th Congressional Districts was Ron Lauder’s $10 million payout to Lee Zeldin, enabling Zeldin and George Santos to literally blanket the landscape. (How is it that Lauder can spend $10 million on a campaign, but I can’t contribute more than $2,800?)
After they pass Voting Rights and Disclose Act (both have already passed the House), then Congress must pass the Electoral Count Act reforms. As The New York Times noted, “The most significant changes to the law would make it far harder, if not impossible, to pull off the schemes that Mr. Trump and his allies tried to use to overturn the 2020 election and hold on to power.”
“The new bills would raise the bar by requiring at least one-fifth of both houses of Congress to sign on before an objection can be lodged and by strictly limiting the grounds for any objection. The reform bills would also clarify that the vice president’s role on Jan. 6 is purely ministerial. The reforms proposed in the bills [make] clear that state officials must count their votes according to the state laws in place on Election Day. They may not change the result after the fact simply because they don’t like it. Critically, the new bills also steer disputes over vote tallies to the courts, where judges — not partisan officials — have the final say.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opinion/congress-midterms.html)
These are the musts. Now for the shoulds:
Pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, essentially codifying the constitutional protections of women’s reproductive health (Roe) into law.
Adopt the Dream Act as a first step toward essential immigration reform (which will have to wait for a solid Democratic majority), and at least legalize the Dreamers.
Pass the necessary deadline waiver that will allow the Equal Rights Amendment, which has now been ratified by the necessary 38 states, to be adopted into the Constitution.