Senate overhaul
Biden needs to issue an Executive Order that prevents the Senate Majority Leader from holding legislation hostage. He needs to make it so that either party leader, majority or minority, can open the floor up for a vote. If Republicans refuse, if they don't want to recognize the legitimacy of the EO, then fuck them, the senate can operate without them. The Senate just needs a quorum of 51 to be present, but thanks to what we've learned from the pro-forma sessions a quorum is assumed to be present at all times unless someone demands a roll call; it regularly operates with just a single senator present in order to hold a bare minimum session and prevemt the senate from going to recess.
If the Republicans refuse to show up to these Democrat-minority sessions, then they just don't get to vote and all legislation will pass unanimously, before moving onto the Democrat-majority House. If they DO show up, then legislation can be voted up or down by the full senate, thereby legitimizing the new power of be minority leader to provide checks and balances against the majority. Win-win!
Of course such an EO would be challenged in court as unconstitutional because it is the executive branch telling the legislative branch how it should function. The senate gets to make up its own rules on how it gets to run itself, with the majority holding all the marbles, so the Republicans would argue that any minority-held sessions and votes are invalid and not legally binding, but it could take a LONG time to work through the courts, giving the Democrats plenty of time to bypass Bitch McConnell.
The Democrats need to play hardball. They need to get creative in their opposition, they need to be fucking ruthless. Outplay the Republicans at their own game. If the Executive Branch can't tell the Legislative Branch what to do, then neither can the Judicial Branch. There is nothing explicitly written down in the constitution that prevents the minority party from one chamber voting on legislature and handing it off to the other chamber. Contrary to popular belief, senate legislation doesn't need 51 votes to pass, it just needs more yays than nays. If 49 senators abstained and the remaining 51 voted 26-25, the legislation would pass even though it only got 26 out of 100 votes. Without a roll call vote, Democrats could pass legislation 48-0, if the Republicans refused to show up.
There's no actual way to stop this from happening, no infrastructure exists to enforce Senate rules, save for the Sergeant-at-Arms expelling people from the senate floor for misbehavior. This would FORCE the Republicans to come to the table and either play along or codify new rules with bipartisan support to prevent either party from doing whatever they want unchecked. The system only works if everyone agrees it works, and if both parties disagree than the system will rightfully break down.
