(NewsNation) — Worried about Vice President Kamala Harris potentially facing a Republican-controlled Senate if she wins the White House, two Democratic strategists tell NewsNation senators are discussing an emergency plan to approve her Cabinet during a December Senate session.
The Senate is currently controlled by the Democrats, but lawmakers in the party are facing an “increasingly tough road” to keeping it this way, NewsNation partner The Hill reports.
Democrats face a difficult Senate map, with multiple incumbents in solidly GOP territory. Republican candidates in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are quickly closing the gap, The Hill reports, and “blue wall” states are now all deemed “toss-ups” by Cook Political Report.
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To solve this issue for Democrats, strategists told NewsNation that the most extreme plan is for current Democratic President Joe Biden’s Cabinet to resign during his lame-duck Senate session. Biden would then appoint Harris’ picks, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would then confirm the new Cabinet with his current 51 to 49 Senate.
One source, however, conceded that this might not be possible. At that point, the source said, Harris would have to decide who in Biden’s Cabinet she would want to keep on. Questions also remain about whether Harris, if she beats Republican former president Donald Trump, could develop a Cabinet list and vet her appointees before a new Senate comes in.
“Sen. Schumer is focused on winning a Democratic majority in the Senate that will work to confirm future President Kamala Harris’s Cabinet,” a spokesperson for the New York Democrat said in a statement.