At the first Democratic debate of the 2020 election, it isn’t Donald Trump who has most often come up as the bogeyman—it’s Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. This makes some sense. McConnell was frustrating the Democratic Party’s agenda in Washington long before Trump shocked everyone by beating Hillary Clinton, almost three years ago, and he may well continue to do the same if and when Trump is gone. The big policy ideas that have dominated the early stages of the primary race—Medicare for All, the Green New Deal—are still just ideas, not yet in contact, in any meaningful way, with the political and procedural realities of lawmaking in Washington. Both wings of the Party have raised questions about the viability of these ideas. The left has called on candidates to support the abolition of the filibuster, in order to minimize the power of the opposition in the Senate. (Though this assumes that Democrats manage to reclaim control of that chamber—another challenge.) The moderates in the Party have suggested that starting from a place of more viable ideas is the way forward. McConnell is where all these arguments come together.
The moderator Chuck Todd made it explicit, asking Elizabeth Warren if, in all her plans, she had a plan for dealing with McConnell. “I do,” she said, letting the answer hang and the audience cheer. But this plan was uncharacteristically vague. “We are a democracy, and the way that a democracy is supposed to work is the will of the people matters,” she said. “We have to push from the outside and lead from the inside.” No one else’s answer, though, was much better. John Delaney said that the way to deal with McConnell was for Democrats to “become the party of getting things done.” Cory Booker touted his success ushering criminal-justice reform through the Senate. Tim Ryan said that the Democrats had to be “a working-class party.” That’s as far as anyone got.
