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(CNN) – President Donald Trump is now learning, in the words of his Rolling Stones campaign anthem, that he can’t always get what he wants. Sen. Mitch McConnell, on the other hand, usually gets it.
The Republican Majority Leader in the Senate chose Tuesday, the day after the Electoral College confirmed the victory of President-elect Joe Biden, as the time to withdraw support for the defeated president. He belatedly congratulated his former Senate colleague 38 days after his election victory, which Trump still rejects.
Putting his authority on the line, McConnell also asked his Senate colleagues not to stunt when Congress meets for a joint session to ratify the election on Jan.6, effectively crushing the president’s hopes for last-minute relief, he reported. CNN.
The Senate leader’s recognition of the election outcome established a dynamic between him and Biden that will be crucial and fascinating when they meet from opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. If McConnell sticks to his majority after two runoff elections in Georgia in January, he will have a big influence on which of the new candidates to the president’s cabinet can win confirmation. Biden’s broad legislative plan could be under threat and nothing will have an easy pass through Congress if the majority leader retains his current position.
Therefore, your courteous words on Tuesday may not be a great guide to how the relationship will develop.
Today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden. The president-elect is no stranger to the Senate. He has been in public service for many years, ”McConnell said, finally acknowledging a reality set in stone on November 3.
His move, characteristically, came in his own time after weeks of remaining insensitive to demands from Democrats and the media for him to acknowledge Biden’s legitimate victory. His indifference to pressure only emphasized his own power, a fact that, in his expressionless way, he seemed to enjoy. And his intransigence, which exacerbated the president’s corrosive attack on democracy, was a blow to any hope that Biden’s victory will transform the attitude of a pre-programmed Republican majority to frustrate Democratic presidents.
Still, McConnell’s comments Tuesday were hugely symbolic, because they effectively put a brake on the Trump era. And his gesture toward Biden underscored how he plans to position himself as the counterweight to the new president – a longtime Senate sparring partner whom he respects.
But the Kentucky Republican’s move was not without risk. By defying the president, he risks starting a protracted spat with Trump, who appears to be planning to establish himself as the Republican leader-in-exile after January 20.
McConnell’s hopes of retaining his job as Senate Majority Leader hinge on two January Senate runs in Georgia that may be subordinate to whether Trump can convince his grassroots voters even when he’s not on the ballot.
But at the same time, McConnell also knows that he needs to convince that a Republican Senate will have to be counterbalanced by a president and a House of Representatives, both Democrats, so Republican voters must run no matter what.
McConnell’s change came at a time when his trademark evasion has angered Democrats on another issue: the effort to pass an economic bailout bill to extend unemployment benefits to millions of unemployed Americans. There were some hopeful signs Tuesday that a scaled-down measure could be agreed before the holidays, with issues like the business liability insurance McConnell supports and direct aid to states opposed by the new Congress and the White House.
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McConnell looks after the interests of his bank
McConnell’s move may have given Republican senators who are tired of being asked to congratulate Biden with some coverage. But unlike some of his colleagues, McConnell, who just won a new six-year term, is insulated from the fury of vengeful Trump voters with a new primary season looming. The veteran Kentucky lawmaker may now also feel the whip of conservative media commentators whose business model is deeply involved in Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that the election was stolen and that Biden will be an illegitimate president.
But his long history of intrigue in the Senate suggests that his decision would have been based on an assessment of how to advance his constant goal: to advance the interests of his own group and solidify his own power.
By waiting so long to congratulate Biden as president-elect after the November election, McConnell likely built the political capital he needs to stop any shameful efforts by pro-Trump senators to block Biden’s inevitable rise to the presidency.
The Majority Leader alerted the White House before going to the Senate on Tuesday to congratulate the president-elect, according to a source familiar with the matter. And McConnell, knowing how the president enjoys the accolades, opened his remarks by painting Trump’s tenure as a period of exceptional achievement, praising him for delivering on promises of a covid-19 vaccine, the economy, national security and healthcare. of veterans.
He dryly sweetened the pill he was about to administer, commenting that “it would take a lot more than one speech to catalog all the great victories that the Trump administration has helped achieve for the American people.”
But McConnell then went on to utter the words Trump didn’t want to hear.
“Many millions of us expected the presidential election to produce a different result. But our system of government has processes to determine who will take office on January 20, “McConnell said.
After praising Biden, McConnell also recognized his current colleague, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, who will serve alongside the veteran former senator from Delaware.
“I also congratulate the Vice President-elect, our colleague from California, Senator Harris. Regardless of our differences, all Americans can be proud that our nation has a vice president elected for the first time.
So far, the president has not publicly reacted to McConnell’s acceptance of the inevitable that many of Trump’s most vehement Republican supporters in the House leadership have yet to match. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, in a briefing apparently called to attack the media, maintained the fiction that there may not be a transition but a “continuation of power” for Trump.
Before McConnell’s statement, some Republicans weren’t ready to fully admit that for Trump it was all over. Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma declined to comment on the Electoral College vote on Monday. And North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer failed to get out of his delicate spot between Trump and reality with incomprehensible coverage.
When asked if Biden was president-elect, Cramer replied, ‘Well, it seems to me that being elected by the Electoral College is a threshold where a title like that is probably more appropriate and it’s, I guess it says official if there is such a thing. as official president-elect or whatever else. ‘
But Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who could be a key figure in the new Congress and a possible partner with Biden on some issues that don’t offend his strong conservative beliefs, told CNN’s Dana Bash that the president’s supporters in the Senate now they had an obligation to accept the outcome of the election as well.
“I think Mitch McConnell did exactly what he had to do,” Romney said. “But some of those who really identified as strong Trump supporters, it would make a real difference if they would come out and speak up and say, you know what, we have to support the new president-elect. He was legitimately elected, let’s move on.
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Harris offers an olive branch
Following McConnell’s statement, Vice President-elect Harris graciously accepted his congratulations, in a way that seemed designed to open an avenue for cooperation as Washington prepares after the holidays.
Much will still depend on the Georgia elections, which could give Harris, as president of the Senate, the crucial decisive voice in votes tied in a 50-50 Senate if both Democratic candidates prevail.
I think it is critically important. I applaud Mitch McConnell for speaking with Joe Biden today, “Harris said in an interview with ABC’s” Good Morning America “which will air on Wednesday.
“You know it would have been better if it had been earlier, but it happened and that’s the most important thing. So let’s move on, let’s move on and where we can find common purpose and common ground, let’s do it. Let’s make that our priority.
Many Democrats, who saw McConnell’s tough game to deny President Barack Obama his Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland and who have seen Majority Leader relentlessly fill the courts with conservative judges, think that any notion of cooperation harbored by Biden it is fanciful.
But during the Obama administration, then-Vice President Biden was often tasked with leading negotiations with McConnell. The Kentucky Republican and Obama made no attempt to hide their dislike for each other. McConnell said he respected Biden because he understood the limits of his positions and did not try to change his ideology, facilitating compromise.
McConnell also wrote fondly of the president-elect in his autobiography, “The Long Game,” laughing at Biden’s talkative reputation.
“As my dad would have said about the vice president if they had met: If you ask him what time it is, he will tell you how to make a watch,” McConnell said.
If that sense of good humor and willingness to pursue limited bipartisan deals survive the first months of a new presidency that is likely to face widespread Republican opposition, it will be a miracle.
CNN’s Manu Raju contributed to this report.
