REVEALED: THE SECRET RON KLAIN MEMO….
…which does not contain the name of a certain 45th president ….
What are you waiting for?
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TO: An establishment, long-time creature of the Beltway white man
FROM: An establishment, long-time creature of the Beltway white man
DATE: A time of continuing tumultuous demand for fundamental change including by the more than 71 million deplorables who did not vote for you
RE: The path ahead
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Good morning.
I hope you had a restful night.
It is so incredible that you gave me the job I always wanted, and now you are about to have all the jobs you ever wanted: president, commander in chief, and de facto head of the Democratic Party.
Now, it’s true that our media monitoring shop said that a lot more of the press coverage in this news cycle is about your predecessor than about you. Neither Playbook nor Mike Allen led with you this morning.
But you will soon be fully in charge.
Nancy and Chuck are having a press availability at 10:15am on the Hill. We have closely coordinated the message with them.
As we ramp up to beat this virus and restore the soul of this nation, we continue to do the work to build the most diverse administration in the history of the country, including settling into top jobs two more establishment, long-time creatures of the Beltway white men (Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti).
You know who you know, Joe.
That’s our gallows humor mantra during personnel meetings.
So, on the pandemic:
We continue to see a patchwork of state responses, cases hitting all-time highs, and a surge in hospitalizations that could strain or break the system.
Or, as the New York Times says today:
The United States set a record for new coronavirus cases and blew past the record for hospitalizations on Wednesday as the pandemic continued to balloon unabated, and a long list of cities and states imposed new restrictions on public life….
Since Election Day, more than a third of the governors across the United States, Republicans and Democrats, have issued public appeals for people to take coronavirus prevention measures seriously, as the third wave — the biggest so far — washes across the nation. Many of them also announced new limits on public and private gatherings.
We have to start worrying about what happens if a dark winter leads to schools having to close back down for the spring semester, which you will own.
Also, even though we still don’t have the keys to the kingdom, there’s a Washington Post op ed that argues that everything is likely to be much worse by January 20th unless you magically become president this month:
Our brains are not wired to easily comprehend geometric growth. Epidemic waves grow slowly at first but progress to massive acceleration and momentum. On the present trajectory, before we inaugurate a new president and before we deploy vaccines, the United States will experience unprecedented trauma from the coronavirus….
In many Midwestern states, covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are doubling every 14 to 21 days — or faster. The probable and tragic reality is that much of the rest of the United States is on the same path. U.S. cases rose by more than 34 percent in the past week, and the United States surged past 120,000 confirmed coronavirus cases per day. On the present course, by Inauguration Day we can expect to see 400,000 Americans infected each day, a rate equal to that recently experienced in Belgium and the Czech Republic. Even with the lower fatality rates witnessed over the summer, such increases could result in deaths on a scale not seen since the 1918 influenza pandemic.
Before I get to the soul stuff, we need to start thinking more about the economy.
More bad timing as it is hard to see Congress doing anything in this lame duck that heads off the looming crisis of commercial real estate, evictions, and bank problems. Jamie Dimon really wants you to succeed – almost as much as he wants to keep his share price high.
Here’s what the Washington Post says today about jobs:
The easy part of the job recovery will be done and dusted by the time President-elect Joe Biden moves into the White House, a key metric shows, leaving a particularly difficult environment for an administration seeking to right the economy.
While the economic recovery tops Biden’s agenda, the torrid job gains of the past few months will inevitably slow, as they already have. There’s little chance that the loss in momentum will be the fault of the new president. Deeper economic trends are afoot.
Job growth has decelerated every month since June, and there are signs from the hard-hit travel and restaurant industries that the fast-spreading novel coronavirus could put economic growth into reverse.
All this pandemic stuff and economic hardship are not likely to automatically bring us together as a nation. In fact, everything seems pretty fraught right now.
Barack’s friend, Danny, tweeted something that seemed perfectly soothing (anodyne, really) and/but it set off a firestorm of recriminations on the left.
I know we think it is those crazy fringe 71 million people on the right who are the cause of divisions in America, but we are picking up some problems in our own party, apparently, too.
There’s this congresswoman from New York – no, not Nita Lowey, someone newer – who is shaking things up.
State Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs ripped into Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Wednesday over disappointing results in key New York battleground congressional and legislative races last week.
Jacobs, who also serves as the Nassau County Democratic leader, said he’s had it with AOC and other left-wingers lecturing Democrats who have to fight to compete and win races in purple districts in Long Island and upstate.
“AOC has no standing on how to run a general election in the suburbs and upstate. AOC is in a district that’s 6-1 Democrat and she couldn’t find a Republican in her district with binoculars,” Jacobs told The Post. (New York Post)
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“What planet is she on?” a veteran Democratic operative scoffed to me over the AOC interview, which he took as denying the reality that movements like “defund the police,” even while at the fringes of Democratic politics, were a serious headwind in many places that the party urgently needs to win to hold power. (Politico)
Comically, the press is saying the prospects for your legislative agenda “rest heavily” on the outcome of the Senate runoffs in Georgia, when we know it is the whole ball of wax.
Update on those races: Georgia Democrats are not clamoring for you to come there. They, uhm, really want you to focus on the transition.
Right now, the Republicans seem to want to make the race about socialism and Jeremiah Wright. The soul of the nation indeed.
I know your Irish soul loves irony so you should know that it appears that Chuck might have stopped himself from getting the job he most wants: majority leader. You don’t want to know….
The political folks will watch that closely.
Lots of other work to get to, including what to do about the U.S. force presence in Afghanistan and China’s mischief making in Hong Kong.
As for your long-standing family tradition of spending Thanksgiving on Nantucket: seven more positive cases yesterday on the island, continuing their symbolically resonant fall outbreak.
See you after your workout.
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If nothing else, compelling artwork:
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