Democrats won the House by a huge margin and cast at least 12 million more votes for Senate Democrats than Republicans. They won this massive popular vote in repudiation of Donald Trump and in an effort to save the country. It's that simple.
That's their mandate, and Democrats don't have to wait until the new Congress is sworn in in January to start fulfilling it. Even now , they are discussing how to do that following Trump's firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and unconstitutionally installation of Trump loyalist Matthew Whitaker as acting AG. Democratic committee leaders are going to push Republicans to include legislation to protect Robert Mueller's investigation and to preserve the documents from the investigation in the spending bills that have to pass by Dec. 7, when the current continuing resolution funding many government operations expires.
Incoming Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York told current and new Democrats on a call that was organized by Nancy Pelosi that the country is in a "crisis moment." He and incoming Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff and presumptive Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings filled members in on what they've done so far in calling for the preservation of documents and what they plan to do: force legislation protecting the special counsel by threatening a shutdown without it. Nadler told CNN's Kate Bolduan that the "future of constitutional government is at stake," and "we must go a long way to make sure that the president is a president, not a king."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is continuing to refuse to allow a vote to protect the special counsel investigation because "it's not necessary," he says. "The Mueller investigation is not under threat." It is clearly under threat, and the only way to force McConnell's hand here is to include it in the spending bill necessary to keep government running.
And when Democrats are accused of "hostage-taking," because you know they will be, they only have to point to the mandate they won on Tuesday. The time is now for Democrats to start thwarting McConnell and Trump. Everything is at stake.