(CNN) - We're
finally making it to 2021. But while everyone on Earth has had enough of the previous year, Americans should prepare for a little more than 2020, at least in the beginning as a large chunk of Republican lawmakers support the effort. Donald Trump for reversing the election.
There will be 20 more days of Trump and his attitude will be fierce.
The president has brought his theater to Washington early, perhaps realizing that his time in the White House is reduced to days.
He also hopes to pressure Republican lawmakers to back up his wild and inaccurate claims of fraud when the electoral votes that seal his departure are counted in what is normally an antiquated ceremony.
He will also travel to Georgia for his last political rally as president, when he encourages voters there to run in the important January 5 runoff and protect the Republican majority in the Senate.
At the time of writing, there are two complications unfolding for Trump.
He has spent months attacking the electoral system as fraudulent, particularly in Georgia, where he lost.
And one of the Republican candidates, Senator David Perdue, will have to be quarantined after coming into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19.
There will be a show on January 6th.
CNN's Jake Tapper reported Thursday that as many as 140 House Republicans could vote to eliminate electoral votes from swing states.
That is a large majority of Republicans in the House trying to reverse the election and pledging allegiance to the president.
It's an easier vote in the House, where objections to the election are bound to fall against the largest number of Democrats in that legislative body.
Senators who held their tongues during his presidency will have a chance to find their independence.
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There will be calls to sanity
.
Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse criticized those who would object to electoral votes from Pennsylvania, and perhaps other states, when counted on January 6.
"I've been urging my colleagues to reject this dangerous ploy as well," Sasse wrote in a six-part Facebook post, after Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, said he would be the senator to force a vote. the objections.
It will be an aggravating vote for Senate Republicans running for reelection in 2022, when the party defends more Senate seats than Democrats.
There will be a split in the Republican Party.
A vote in favor of the objections Trump wants is a vote in favor of the conspiracy theory on the facts and against the democratic will of the country.
A vote against the objections is to accept the decision of the people but to challenge the rank and file of the Republican Party and fail a test of loyalty to Trump, likely leading to a showdown in the primaries in the near future.
Few Senate Republicans want to make this decision, which is why party leaders had tried to protect themselves from it.
But now that Hawley has decided to object, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear to lawmakers that he is giving them room to vote conscientiously, according to a source familiar with a Thursday conference call in which McConnell He asked Hawley - who was not present - to explain his rationale.
Still, McConnell told his colleagues that even with a career as long as his, the vote would mark one of the most important, perhaps the most significant, he has ever cast in his life, and that it would mark the same for all senators in the call, two people familiar with the call told CNN.
But this division in the party will carry over to other issues.
As Trump intervenes, without being bound by any kind of official responsibility, his influence over the party will be tested.
President Trump's tweets in favor of the $ 2,000 stimulus checks got several Republican senators backing the idea, although McConnell did kill it.
When former President Trump tweets in favor of something, will Republicans pay attention?
There will be a reckoning on the president's Twitter account
.
Even after you leave office, the president will have access to your Twitter account.
It has been his preferred mode of communication while in office.
The problem for the future former president is that social media companies may not give him the same deference after leaving the position they have given him as leader of the free world.
Donald Trump's presidency in numbers
Twitter and Facebook have begun to flag posts in which he spreads falsehoods about his electoral defeat as suspicious, but it may soon be difficult for those companies to justify allowing Trump to actually publish them in the first place.
Accounts have been suspended for less than Trump does on a daily basis and social media companies will come under immediate pressure to censor Trump, perhaps suspending his account.
The effects of such a decision, if it were to occur, would be interesting not only to see if his power of influence is curtailed without his platform, but also to speed up Republican scrutiny of "Section 230," a provision of the telecommunications law that separates content companies that users post on their sites.
There will be a division among the Democrats.
It is much easier to be united in the pursuit of power than to remain united in power.
Trump, to his credit, was able to effectively unite Republicans, often through fear and intimidation, during his tenure.
As president, Biden is unlikely to use those same tactics.
And he will have to deal with left-wing progressives who want more attention to big issues like climate change and inequality, which require systemic change that his party's moderates have less interest in pursuing.
A year from now, it will be much easier for Republicans to focus on Biden's policies, and he is likely to be a relatively moderate president, in a way that annoys and discourages progressives.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders will not allow Biden to take the moderate route.
Neither will Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or the Black Legislative Group in Congress.
The proof of these divisions is already evident in the scrutiny that Biden has faced from progressives in selecting his cabinet.
His ability to navigate the demands of the groups that came together for his campaign and circumvent Republican obstruction will determine whether he can do anything in the White House.
There will be a majority in the Senate.
We just don't know yet which party will have it.
That depends on what happens Tuesday in the Georgia Senate runoff.
If the two Republicans who currently hold the seats - Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler - win, the Republicans will have 51 votes and control the Senate.
Given McConnell's experience in obstruction and his interest in the 2022 midterm elections, a 51-seat majority could be Biden's biggest presidential headache.
If Democratic rivals - Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock - win, the resulting 50-50 tie won't give Democrats much leeway to pass legislation, but it will give them the ability to get measures in the Senate with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. being able to break ties as president of the Senate.
There will be a lot more covid-19.
The start of Biden's presidency will likely be judged more by what it does to push the use of covid-19 vaccines than by any big political proposal.
The country is at war with the disease, and as it prepares to take office, thousands of Americans die every day.
He promised to "move heaven and earth" to get vaccines to Americans, something easier said than done while navigating public skepticism of vaccines.
There will be something new.
Think of the beginning of 2020, when COVID-19 was not yet known to be in the country, and the predominant political story was the historic impeachment of Trump for pressuring foreign governments to help him tarnish Biden.
A year later, those words seem like something from a different era.
Covid-19 rages on its impact, impeachment feels like a footnote to history, and instead of being sabotaged by Trump, Biden will soon be president.
This year is sure to include its own twists and turns, and our collective vision of this strange and tumultuous period will change as it stretches through time and perspectives.
Mitch McConnell