What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[DGuller]

You guys do realize that your "leftist radicals" are basically like the centrist social democrats in Europe, right?

Who cares?  Our radical right is basically like the centrists in Saudi Arabia, so what?  The best path towards winning elections in the US in 2020 is to know what is radical and what is mainstream in the US in 2020.

[Sheilbh]

I got a couple of things badly wrong in 2020, and Joe Biden was probably the biggest one.  I really did think for a long time that he was a completely uninspired choice, so uninspired that he could hand Trump a second term due to lack of enthusiasm.  I now think that he was the best candidate Democrats could have, and I think that other candidates may have very well lost us the election.

Agreed. I've always quite liked Biden but I thought he had weaknesses but he delivered on his promise of winning back the rust-belt states. I still think that Bernie might have been able to do that, but was certainly the only candidate with that priority. And ultimately you can't win the Democratic nomination without strong support in the black community which none of the other candidates had or even feinted at.

I do think the map points to a strategic choice for Democrats and Republicans though. Lot's of possibilities.

I guess the real issue though is whether the policies expressed can win over American voters, who tend to be far more right wing.

I don't thnk American voters are far to the right of John Kasich.

Democrats have to win elections in a climate where nearly half the voters were willing to vote for Trump and the current Republican Party. The balance is this:

- push leftish policies to fire up a progressive base and get them to vote;

- but risk firing up the right against you/failing to win over voters in the middle.

There's always going to be a fight within the Dems. I think both sides are probably, possibly right - it's too soon to tell based on an election day poll givent that we know election day was far more pro-Trump. We need to wait for more detailed analysis of the whole 2020 votes including the overwhelmingly Biden mail-in and early voters.

But without that analysis I think it's probably true that the progressive wing energised their base in swing states (e.g. Ilhan Omar in Minnesota with far better numbers than for Clinton in 2016) which helped win the Presidential election. I also think it's probably true that centrists lost their seats or failed to win seats because they were portrayed as tied to the progressive wing. I think both of those are true and are being amplified in each sides' preferred arena: the progressives in social media, the centrists in the traditional media.

I don't think we'll know until we have the analysis and I think there's always going to be a fight at this stage of a new administration as people are scrapping for power and influence in it. It's frustrating because I actually think both sides need to put that aside (as they did in the 2020 election) and focus on Georgia.

I think it's the internet that's the issue for Democrats. Progressives doing well in progressive areas and pushing for left-wing policies is how the party should work - and they will have valuable lessons on mobilising voters etc. Centrists being able to push their message elsewhere should also work. As it is social media emphasises both sides of the fight and Republicans take advantage (this is like my thought that maybe the issue with Democrat targeting races is that it's the internet/social media campaigns and online donors that are allocating their funds badly, not the party). The left in the US are far more constructive than they are here (except for the DSA types) and the key is how they can all work together and not let each other's messaging get in the way.

[frunk]

The above makes me wonder if any other Democratic candidate would have won against Donald, now that the election is more or less behind us and we know what we know.

There was a lot of gnashing of teeth when Biden became the presumptive Dem nominee. A lot of posters here, including myself, were unconvinced by Joe and thought the Dems had better choices.

As it turned out, Joe united the party, returned much of the Midwest to the Dems, and flipped Arizona and Georgia in an election where 71 million Americans voted for Donald Trump! Would any of the other candidates have been able to do that? I don't know.

I still don't think Biden was the best choice, but I am glad he was good enough.

To a large extent I think he won by staying quiet and letting Trump speak for himself.

[Syt]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-gsa-letter-biden-transition/2020/11/08/07093acc-21e9-11eb-8672-c281c7a2c96e_story.html

A little-known Trump appointee is in charge of handing transition resources to Biden — and she isn't budging

A Trump administration appointee is refusing to sign a letter allowing President-elect Joe Biden's transition team to formally begin its work this week, in another sign the incumbent president has not acknowledged Biden's victory and could disrupt the transfer of power.

The administrator of the General Services Administration, the low-profile agency in charge of federal buildings, has a little-known role when a new president is elected: to sign paperwork officially turning over millions of dollars, as well as give access to government officials, office space in agencies and equipment authorized for the taxpayer-funded transition teams of the winner.

It amounts to a formal declaration by the federal government, outside of the media, of the winner of the presidential race.

But by Sunday evening, almost 36 hours after media outlets projected Biden as the winner, GSA Administrator Emily Murphy had written no such letter. And the Trump administration, in keeping with the president's failure to concede the election, has no immediate plans to sign one. This could lead to the first transition delay in modern history, except in 2000, when the Supreme Court decided a recount dispute between Al Gore and George W. Bush in December.

"An ascertainment has not yet been made," Pamela Pennington, a spokeswoman for GSA, said in an email, "and its Administrator will continue to abide by, and fulfill, all requirements under the law."

The GSA statement left experts on federal transitions to wonder when the White House expects the handoff from one administration to the next to begin — when the president has exhausted his legal avenues to fight the results, or the formal vote of the electoral college on Dec. 14? There are 74 days, as of Sunday, until the Biden inauguration on Jan. 20.

"No agency head is going to get out in front of the president on transition issues right now," said one senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. The official predicted that agency heads will be told not to talk to the Biden team.

The decision has turned attention to Murphy, whose four-year tenure has been marked by several controversies involving the president, an unusually high profile for an agency little known outside of Washington.

"Her action now has to be condemned," said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who leads a House oversight panel on federal operations. "It's behavior that is consistent with her subservience to wishes of the president himself, and it is clearly harmful to the orderly transition of power."

The delay has implications both practical and symbolic.

By declaring the "apparent winner" of a presidential election, the GSA administrator releases computer systems and money for salaries and administrative support for the mammoth undertaking of setting up a new government — $9.9 million this year.

Transition officials get government email addresses. They get office space at every federal agency. They can begin to work with the Office of Government Ethics to process financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest forms for their nominees.

And they get access to senior officials, both political appointees of the outgoing administration and career civil servants, who relay an agency's ongoing priorities and projects, upcoming deadlines, problem areas and risks. The federal government is a $4.5 trillion operation, and while the Biden team is not new to government, the access is critical, experts said.

This is all on hold for now.

"Now that the election has been independently called for Joe Biden, we look forward to the GSA Administrator quickly ascertaining Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the President-elect and Vice President-elect," a Biden transition spokesman said in an email. "America's national security and economic interests depend on the federal government signaling clearly and swiftly that the United States government will respect the will of the American people and engage in a smooth and peaceful transfer of power."

As the campaign wound down, President Trump gave signals that he would not easily hand over the reins to his successor, if there was one. But for people who have been through them, a presidential transition is a massive undertaking requiring discipline, decision-making and fast learning under the smoothest circumstances. Each lost day puts the new government behind schedule.

"The transition process is fundamental to safely making sure the next team is ready to go on Day One," said Max Stier, president and chief executive of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, which has set up a presidential transition center and shares advice with the Biden and Trump teams. "It's critical that you have access to the agencies before you put your people in place."

The Biden team can move forward to get preliminary security clearances and begin FBI background checks on potential nominees requiring Senate confirmation.

Another senior administration official who was not authorized to speak publicly said each agency has drafted detailed transition plans for a new administration, but they will not be released to the Biden team until a winner is formally declared.

Trump has been resistant to participating in a transition — fearing it is a bad omen — but has allowed top aides to participate as long as the efforts do not become public, administration officials said. He is unlikely to concede he has lost or participate in traditional activities, the officials said.

In a call on Friday with administration officials, Mary Gibert, the head of the presidential transition team at the GSA, told colleagues the agency was in a holding pattern and not to host people from Biden teams until there is "ascertainment." She gave no specific timeline on when it was expected.

The delay has already gummed up discussions on critical issues, including plans to distribute a possible coronavirus vaccine, this official said.

GSA has been part of transition planning since the Presidential Transition Act was signed in 1963. Since then, the agency has identified the winner within hours or a day of media projections, and weeks before the results were made official by the electoral college.

Chris Lu, who served as former president Barack Obama's transition director in 2008, recalled that after Obama was declared the winner over the late senator John McCain on Nov. 4, he went to sleep to get up early the next morning to open the transition office. He missed the call from GSA's acting administrator, Jim Williams, informing him that he had signed over transition resources to the Obama team.

"Jim made the call at 1 a.m.," Lu said. "There was simply no controversy involved."

Robert C. MacKichan Jr., an attorney who served as GSA general counsel for presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, said that because Trump is contesting the election and the electors have not yet voted, it's too early for Murphy to make a call. Once the administrator issues the letter, the funds can be spent and can't be recouped.

"I don't think, at this point, I would feel comfortable making that determination now," MacKichan said. "It's premature."

MacKichan said he was confident Murphy would handle a difficult situation fairly. "As an attorney and as a procurement official, I think she has the highest standard of integrity," he said.

Murphy has not sought the limelight during her tenure and was described by former colleagues as a by-the-book person. She's regarded as well-qualified, an expert on contracting with experience both at the agency, where she had previously served as chief acquisition officer, and on Capitol Hill, where she had been a staffer for multiple committees. Heading a federal agency unknown to most Americans seemed like an ideal assignment.

But under Trump, two issues of personal importance to the president became almost constant sources of controversy for her: the lease Trump's company holds with the agency for its D.C. hotel, located in the federally owned Old Post Office Pavilion, and the planned consolidation of the FBI headquarters.

Both projects have pressed Murphy into duty defending the president, and her actions elicited criticism from the agency's watchdog as well as from congressional Democrats.

Trump's hotel lease was signed with the agency before Trump took office, and he resigned his position with the company when he entered office. But he retained ownership of his business, allowing him to profit from the property while in office.

Democrats held repeated hearings to get a better explanation of how the agency decided to allow Trump to keep the lease given that the Constitution bar presidents from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments, which often patronize the hotel. Under Murphy, the GSA repeatedly declined to provide documents to House Democrats, including the monthly income statements it receives from Trump's company.

Last year, the agency's inspector general determined that GSA "improperly" ignored those concerns in allowing Trump's company to keep the lease. GSA defended itself by saying that the investigation "found no undue influence, pressure or unwarranted involvement of any kind by anyone."

Trump has personally intervened in the most prominent real estate project in the agency's entire portfolio: the plan to build a new FBI headquarters that would allow the bureau out of the crumbling and insecure J. Edgar Hoover Building. During his first year in office, Trump and the GSA abruptly canceled a bipartisan plan to build a new suburban headquarters for the agency, infuriating Democrats who had worked more than a decade on the project and who alleged that Trump canceled the project so a competing hotel could never be built in place of the Hoover building, a site down the street from his hotel. The White House said the president's business had nothing to do with the decision.

[Monoriu]

If the transition is that important, the process should be stipulated in law. 

[jimmy olsen]

AOC will run against Don Jr. in 2024 and both will cause a split in their respective parties. US will continue with a 4+ party system, joining the civilized world.

I could see her primarying Schumer, depending on how things play out.

[Grey Fox]

I think AOC is still too young in 2024 both in eligibility & actual age. It's only a max of 8 years, ending your 2 terms before you are 50 makes for a very long post-presidency life.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I guess the real issue though is whether the policies expressed can win over American voters, who tend to be far more right wing.

Democrats have to win elections in a climate where nearly half the voters were willing to vote for Trump and the current Republican Party. The balance is this:

- push leftish policies to fire up a progressive base and get them to vote;

- but risk firing up the right against you/failing to win over voters in the middle.

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the country, one that I shared until relatively recently too. America isn't particularly against left economic policy, in fact it probably leans towards it. What America is against is "left cultural" issues, and of course even then I mean more the Republican base, but they represent a lot of the country as proven by last week's election. The biggest lesson, IMO, to draw from Trumpism is for a very significant portion of the electorate cultural issues outweigh anything else. Democrats have largely not spoken to these issues since about 2004, and they haven't spoken to them effectively since before then. Do we need to? Can we? Hard to say, but when people go after AOC on the right it's not actually her socialist economic policies, it is what she represents culturally. The vast, vast majority of this culturally conservative base are low propensity and low information voters, that couldn't discern socialism from liberal market economics if their lives depended on it. These are people who probably support Medicare, Medicaid, probably support Obamacare if you only describe its policy impact and don't use the word Obamacare, probably support higher minimum wages, more rights for unions, more limitations on U.S. corporate behavior etc etc. But to this segment of the population the right has successfully transmogrified the word socialism to mean a cultural left set of ideas that really have nothing to do with what educated people mean when they use the word, but that doesn't matter. We can't "out educate" people, we have to recognize the political reality and respond accordingly.

To a broad swathe of the country you say socialism and they think "my car will be taken away because city dwellers think we should walk and ride buses everywhere", "my Church should have to marry two transgenders because the pastor will be forced to do so", "my daughter will have to go to public restrooms with adult men", "they hate our soldiers", "they hate our country", "they hate people who live outside of the big cities."

The answer to these misguided and malformed views, unfortunately, is not to explain what socialism really is and how they probably approve of it economically. You lack the cultural believability and currency to talk to these people, so they won't even let you (you being the left) past the front door. You're the other. Socialism is the other. It is not an economic philosophy.

[Oexmelin]

Yes. It's also what makes all this talk of compromise and moderation particularly abhorrent for large swaths of the left, because it's read (rightly) as a compromise over who they *are*, not over what they propose. Be less gay, less black, less urban.

This is why AOC is right: not because her politics are objectively right (even though I tend to agree with them) but because she advocates a campaign of proximity, which incomprehensibly seems utterly foreign to the Democratic establishment. I do think COVID here hurt the Democrats who largely stopped going door to door, while Republicans had no such qualms.

[Malthus]

I guess the real issue though is whether the policies expressed can win over American voters, who tend to be far more right wing.

Democrats have to win elections in a climate where nearly half the voters were willing to vote for Trump and the current Republican Party. The balance is this:

- push leftish policies to fire up a progressive base and get them to vote;

- but risk firing up the right against you/failing to win over voters in the middle.

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the country, one that I shared until relatively recently too. America isn't particularly against left economic policy, in fact it probably leans towards it. What America is against is "left cultural" issues, and of course even then I mean more the Republican base, but they represent a lot of the country as proven by last week's election. The biggest lesson, IMO, to draw from Trumpism is for a very significant portion of the electorate cultural issues outweigh anything else. Democrats have largely not spoken to these issues since about 2004, and they haven't spoken to them effectively since before then. Do we need to? Can we? Hard to say, but when people go after AOC on the right it's not actually her socialist economic policies, it is what she represents culturally. The vast, vast majority of this culturally conservative base are low propensity and low information voters, that couldn't discern socialism from liberal market economics if their lives depended on it. These are people who probably support Medicare, Medicaid, probably support Obamacare if you only describe its policy impact and don't use the word Obamacare, probably support higher minimum wages, more rights for unions, more limitations on U.S. corporate behavior etc etc. But to this segment of the population the right has successfully transmogrified the word socialism to mean a cultural left set of ideas that really have nothing to do with what educated people mean when they use the word, but that doesn't matter. We can't "out educate" people, we have to recognize the political reality and respond accordingly.

To a broad swathe of the country you say socialism and they think "my car will be taken away because city dwellers think we should walk and ride buses everywhere", "my Church should have to marry two transgenders because the pastor will be forced to do so", "my daughter will have to go to public restrooms with adult men", "they hate our soldiers", "they hate our country", "they hate people who live outside of the big cities."

The answer to these misguided and malformed views, unfortunately, is not to explain what socialism really is and how they probably approve of it economically. You lack the cultural believability and currency to talk to these people, so they won't even let you (you being the left) past the front door. You're the other. Socialism is the other. It is not an economic philosophy.

You have made a case for what the answer is not; what in your opinion is the best course?

[Malthus]

Yes. It's also what makes all this talk of compromise and moderation particularly abhorrent for large swaths of the left, because it's read (rightly) as a compromise over who they *are*, not over what they propose. Be less gay, less black, less urban.

This is why AOC is right: not because her politics are objectively right (even though I tend to agree with them) but because she advocates a campaign of proximity, which incomprehensibly seems utterly foreign to the Democratic establishment. I do think COVID here hurt the Democrats who largely stopped going door to door, while Republicans had no such qualms.

Whether the talk is abhorrent or not to progressives isn't the primary concern; of course progressives believe that failing to follow progressive policies to the letter is abhorrent - putting everything in moral terms, where progressive policies are moral and those who do not follow them are not, is a basic feature of progressivism.

The real problem is whether or not following progressive policies risks losing elections for the left, hence losing power to the Trumpite right.

I get the point that, for sone progressives, the Democrats gaining power is meaningless if they don't actually enact progressive policies - why bother supporting them, if they are basically indistinguishable from conservatives? Problem is that Trumpite Republicans are not merely conservative - they are, as we have seen, dangerously insane. So keeping them out, even at the expense of electing relatively conservative Democrats, has value.

This is why refusing to "compromise" by progressives risks making the perfect the enemy of the good.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Uhh, I'm not sure we get a good outcome, I'm in kind of wait and see mode. I am from these people in a sense, the right cultural people. I don't know that there is much reaching these people. The ones I'm thinking of tend to be uneducated and belligerently so, anti-expertise and anti-knowledge. I'm not sure how I'd begin to reach them. I am an educated individual, so is my wife so are my close friends, many whom have similar cultural backgrounds (white people, from religious families etc), but my family also had a bit more money and such and more respect for educational and occupational attainment. Like while I grew up around a lot of cultural conservatives, it was in an environment where people really respected those with more education than them, those with professional degrees and etc, and they genuinely listened to and respected them when they would try to explain things. Today the attitude is more that those people are just elitist cucks who can fuck right off.

I don't know how you penetrate through that. I see a lot of similarities to what's gone on in places like Poland and Hungary, and even to a lesser degree in the United Kingdom with some of the messaging that you saw around Brexit and that wing of British conservatism.

I wish I knew what an answer or a good ending looked like. Maybe for America just our diversity of those age 40 and under and revulsion towards white grievance culture will mean the "good guys" to be simplistic, simply outlast and out breed the bad.

[Oexmelin]

Whether the talk is abhorrent or not to progressives isn't the primary concern; of course progressives believe that failing to follow progressive policies to the letter is abhorrent - putting everything in moral terms, where progressive policies are moral and those who do not follow them are not, is a basic feature of progressivism.

The real problem is whether or not following progressive policies risks losing elections for the left, hence losing power to the Trumpite right.

Didn't you just read OvB's post? He just explained it very clearly: it's not about policies. It's not about progressives scaring away good moderates. It's about the Other scaring away people who do not like them. It's about identity. How do you compromise on identity? When people are proposing identical policies, and one is termed anti-american and the other one is celebrated, it's difficult to not read it as a rejection of who you are, rather than what you say. And if you can't understand how being told "be a little less black, a little less Mexican, a little less gay" is received poorly, I don't know what to tell you.

I understand you really are committed to the narrative of moderation is the greatest thing ever for a political regime. I sympathize with that, but I think this is the product of the political 90s, when such a stance was possible, because a lot of people more or less agreed on some version of neoliberal order. Or so we thought. But this is no longer the type of climate we are in; and the sort of gentleman's agreement about neoliberalism was shown to have been an agreement of elites. We no longer live in the type of political climate where moderation does the sort of work that you think it does.

[DGuller]

When perfect makes itself the enemy of the good, it implicitly makes itself the ally of the terrible.  I think what progressive fail to understand is that things are going to gradually change for the better just as long as you don't let people get elected who would move things backwards.  I really have no sympathy for the view that it doesn't matter for them whether Democrats or Republicans get elected, and I have a lot of disdain for it given what that attitude accomplishes in practice.

[Oexmelin]

When perfect makes itself the enemy of the good, it implicitly makes itself the ally of the terrible.  I think what progressive fail to understand is that things are going to gradually change for the better just as long as you don't let people get elected who would move things backwards.  I really have no sympathy for the view that it doesn't matter for them whether Democrats or Republicans get elected, and I have a lot of disdain for it given what that attitude accomplishes in practice.

I don't see how that is responding to what I wrote.