The hour is too early and several races are too close to call, but nonetheless a picture is starting to emerge from the election-night haze. Given what we know already, a Joe Biden presidential victory is likely, as is Republican retention of control in the Senate. To reiterate, this isn’t the guaranteed outcome — nothing is certain yet. But it’s still worth pausing for a moment to consider what it might look like, if only so the Left knows as early as possible what to prepare for.

When President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden came into office in 2008, the Democratic Party had control of the executive branch and both chambers of the legislature. Despite having demonstrated a willingness to play ball with elites and power brokers early in his career, Obama had cultivated a reputation on the campaign trail as a crusader for change, which proved popular with voters. The avowedly centrist Biden, who had long voiced his objection to “class warfare and populism,” was brought onto the ticket to soften this image. And so the moderate administration proceeded to squander the opportunities afforded by Democratic control over both the White House and Congress.

Given this history alone, we have every reason to doubt that if Biden wins the presidency and the Democrats nail down both the House and the Senate, the Democratic Party leadership with Biden at the helm will pursue any ambitious reforms — at least not without massive popular pressure compelling them to take ambitious action for electoral reasons, signs the party establishment still might miss or ignore on account of its corporate enmeshment and general inertia.