Dem
48
Ties
3
GOP
49
If the Democrats hang onto the Senate, Joe Biden will be able to get judges confirmed, but if the Republicans take the House, which seems likely, he can forget about any legislation. In private, Biden and his staff have been drawing up plans for dealing with the situation. Republicans will start investigating everything from Hunter Biden's laptop to what Biden eats for breakfast. He can certainly attack them for not doing the job they were elected to do. If the House starts impeaching people, he can attack them as extremists. He can also focus on foreign policy, something Congress doesn't have much power over. As former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that is an area where he has a lot of interest and tons of expertise.
Biden could also ask Congress to pass bills that are very popular, like improving veterans' benefits and reducing the cost of insulin. If the Republicans balk, which they probably will, he can repeatedly hit them over the head with it if he runs in 2024, as in: "Republicans hate our brave veterans."
Biden could also do something like propose a middle-class tax cuts paid for by increasing taxes on the rich. When the Republicans killed it, he could say he was trying to help people dealing with inflation, but Republicans don't care about ordinary people.
One thing Biden might have to deal with is the debt limit. The Republicans are threatening to destroy the world economy by forcing the U.S. into bankruptcy if Biden doesn't agree to effectively repeal all the bills he got passed this year. There are two ways he could deal with this. One is to ask Congress to raise the debt limit a bunch using the budget reconciliation process during a special lame-duck session of Congress in December.
The other is to instruct the mint to produce a handful of trillion-dollar coins and deposit them in the Fed's bank account, thus wiping out much of the debt on paper. Republicans would howl to the moon, but it is perfectly legal. It also won't affect inflation because inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods. Producing five coins and storing them in Fort Knox does not change either demand or supply. It is just an accounting trick. Biden doesn't like tricks, but if he can't get the Democrats to raise the limit in December, he may not have many options left. (V)