The Other Election Everyone Should Be Thinking About

As I prepare to fill out my primary ballot for Super Tuesday, I am asking myself a crucial question I urge everybody else to ask themselves as well: Assuming Democrats wins the Presidency and a majority in the Senate in the coming election, who would be the most likely to retain Congressional majorities in 2022?

Historically, the winning Presidential party loses seats in their first midterms, and this tends to be extremely consequential. In 2018, it gave us the only tool we had to constrain this President. In 2022, it could stop a Democratic presidency in its tracks.

It’s hard to imagine anyone suffering a greater chance of electoral blow-back than the candidate who has sought the most change. No one doubts that a President Sanders would introduce sweeping legislation from day one on multiple fronts. Though he refused to choose a first priority in interviews, by necessity Medicare-for-All would be at the top of the list. It would certainly be even more difficult to pass than the Affordable Healthcare Act was — and Obama came in with a 60-vote majority in the Senate, which not even the greatest optimist dreams of being possible this year.

Obama’s experience is instructive. Here was a popular President who had pulled the country back from the brink of economic ruin and finally got us on the road to a…