After the 2 Senate wins in Georgia, when is McConnell no longer in his office? Do we have to wait for Biden’s inauguration, or can it happen right away?
First the GA elections have to be certified. That’s likely to be before inauguration, but it’s at least a few days away.
At that point the Senate is split 50-50 and McConnell is still majority leader by nature of Pence being the tie-breaking vote. He ceases to be majority leader upon Harris’ inauguration as VP on the 20th.
Unrealistic wrinkle: if Congress is for some reason unable to count the Electoral College votes by the 20th, then Nancy Pelosi becomes President and the office of VP is unfilled. I asked in another thread who is the majority leader in that case, but no one so far has posted an answer.
I’m not disagreeing with you, I’m just asking whether this is your guess or is it an already-established rule for defining the “majority leader”. In other words, when deciding which party is the majority of the senate, do we look only at the 100 senators, or do we include the VP in the calculation? I, for one, don’t know. Perhaps, when the senators are split 50-50, the majority party remains there until the minority party gets a 51st senator.
My understanding is that each two-year “congress” of the Senate makes its own rules. Usually they vote to continue the normal rules of the previous congress, but can vote to change the rules at any time. The position of “Majority Leader” (unlike the Speaker of the House) isn’t even a position that is dictated by law or anything; it’s just part of the Senate rules.
So if there is no rule that covers this edge case (50/50 tie with no VP tie-breaker), it’s possible that McConnell would continue as Majority Leader until there is a vote to overturn his previous election, but I’m not sure about this.
This is an established rule. The VP is the tie-breaker in the case of a 50/50 split.
I guess I didn’t explain my question well enough.
That is for determining which side wins a vote. Does it also apply to determining which party is the majority?
Yes, it does. There have been ties before and the party of the VP determines who is majority leader.
If majority leader is not an official title, then it’s just up to a vote. So all it takes is for the 50 senators + 1 to want the majority leader to be a Democrat, and that becomes true.
If that logic isn’t sufficient, we can also look at precedent. In 2001, we early on had a split Senate. And, on January 20th, when Dick Cheney became Vice President, the majority leader became a Republican (Trent Lott–R MS).
Furthermore, that year a Republican became an independent and caucused with the Democrats, gave them the majority, and that allowed them to install a Democrat (Tom Daschle–D SD) as majority leader.
I didn’t realize that there was a precedent with a 50/50 split. Thanks for the info. Ignorance fought!
Just to clarify a few things, there is no vote in the Senate on who will be “Majority Leader” and the position is almost entirely absent from the official Senate rules. The position and its authorities exist almost entirely as a matter of Senate precedents.
At the start of each Congress, Senators of each party meet in party caucuses to select their respective floor leaders. The one who’s party can command a majority in the Senate is Majority Leader, and the other is Minority Leader. There’s no Senate vote to confirm this – it just is. In the case of Jeffords’ switch to the Democrats in 2001, nobody voted to replace Trent Lott with Tom Daschle as Majority Leader. Once Jeffords began to caucus with the Democrats, Lott and Daschle just switched titles.
No, “majority leader” is the leader of the party that has the majority (Chuck is Senate minority leader). The Senate is officially presided over by the VP (who is called President of the Senate), but, lacking a nominal vote, it is a pretty shit job, so the VP goes to greet foreign dignitaries, attend funerals, mismanage epidemics and random other stuff. Mitch’s official title of office is President Pro-Tem of the Senate.
Maybe sooner. Given how today has gone, I’m hoping that Romney is considering changing party.
There’s just no way – Romney is as rock-ribbed conservative as they come and would have no home in the Democratic party.
Nope, the President Pro Tem is Grassley. The Pro Tem is usually the senior Senator of the majority party. But other than being third in line of presidential succession, it’s not a very important position. The majority leader is voted on by the majority caucus. It could be any of them.
BTW, since the Senate is tied 50-50, the VP is going to be a very important position once the new admin is sworn in. Harris is likely to vote to break more ties than probably any of her predecessors.
Mittens is absolutely gunning for the GOP nomination in 2024 and has been ever since he announced his Senate campaign.
He’s got no shot. It wouldn’t even be close. Even if he was the only candidate in his lane (Kasich, Hogan, and Sasse decide not to run), his lane in the current GOP has shrunk A LOT. He’d get maybe 10% of the vote in the first few primaries and drop out after South Carolina or Nevada.
ETA. Let’s take the 2020 Georgia election as an example. IMHO the voters Romney has any kind of chance with in a GOP primary are the ones who voted for Biden for POTUS and Perdue for senate. His base has shrunk that much in a mere 8 years. That’s what’s left of sane Republicans.
Maybe so, but he’s certainly spent the last two years trying to build a brand as “the sane Republican” in the hopes that Trumpism would collapse and leave a leadership vacuum for him to slide into.
[quote=“FlikTheBlue, post:12, topic:929860, full:true”]
Maybe sooner. Given how today has gone, I’m hoping that Romney is considering changing party. [/quote]
He might switch to independent and caucus with the Democrats for a term. But I think it more likely Joe Manchin of West Virginia would switch parties to the Republicans, giving the GOP the majority.
No doubt Mitch would show him the wonders of the Earth and promise him a juicy committee chairmanship.
IMO this week is not the week to be making confident predictions about 2024. Everything is in play and will be for the next few months. The aftershocks of the last 24 hours will be reverberating for a long time.
I’m actually pretty confident Manchin will not defect. As it is, he’s set to take over the chairmanship of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which is obviously an enormous post for a Senator from West Virginia. He’s also a senior member on the Senate Appropriations and Armed Services Committees. There just isn’t that much more that Mitch could offer him that he isn’t already set to inherit.