That's a great question ("What can they do?") and the answer is a lot. As you may or may not know, legislative bodies have a whip. The current Democratic Senat

That's a great question ("What can they do?") and the answer is a lot. As you may or may not know, legislative bodies have a whip. The current Democratic Senate whip is Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL). The job of a whip is quite literally to whip votes. It is to get legislation passed. Betwen the whip and the Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), they could: 1. Remove Manchin and Sinema from committee chairs; 2. Remove them from committees completely (eg Dianne Feinstein was effectively removed because she's basically a billion years old and senile); 3. Investigate the links between Manchin, his actions on the Energy Committee and his brother's coal company in West Virginia from which he personally profits. The counterargument is that they'll switch sides and either join the Republicans or simply caucus with them to retake the majority (eg like Tom Daschle did with Jim Jeffords). Let them. You cannot allow people to hold you hostage like that. They probably won't either because currently they enjoy a disproportionate amount of power. As soon as the GOP doesn't need them, they'll just be relegated to being junior Senators with little to no power. The Republicans unlike the Democrats know how to whip votes. Take the fascinating case of Madison Cawthorn who found himself the subject of an organized hit campaign after making off-the-cuff remarks about Republican sex parties (seriously). He got dragged into Kevin McCarthy's office and came out looking like he'd been physically beaten. The GOP primaried him and he lost. That's how you get your caucus to toe the line. So Manchin and Sinema could (and should) be primaried. Biden could create executive orders to advance his agenda. He's too much of an institutionalist to worry about separation of powers and doing anything "too divisive". You know who doesn't worry about that? Republicans. Republicans care about winning. Democrats care about fundraising off how terrible Republicans are. Even if such executive orders are struck down by the Supreme Court as overreach then at least you tried. Example: The Senate could raised the minimum wage to $15 as a budget reconciliation process. They didn't. Why? Respect for some outdated notion of norms, rules and procedures. You know what the Republicans did when faced with pushback from the Senate parliamentarian on passing Bush's tax cuts? They fired him and found someone else [1]. Remember that keeping Roe v. Wade enjoyed wide public support (eg 64% according to [2]; I've seen other figures as high as 70-75%). Even if legislation cannot pass you force politicians to put their vote on the record. Votes on the record matter. Hilary's support for the Iraq War came back to haunt her (in 2008, mostly). [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/05/08/key-senate-official-loses-job-in-dispute-with-gop/e2310021-0f14-4667-a261-54e6c033207c/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/05/08/k... [2]: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/19/1099844097/abortion-polling-roe-v-wade-supreme-court-draft-opinion https://www.npr.org/2022/05/19/1099844097/abortion-polling-r...