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Tonight at 8pm ET, I will take your questions live during a free town hall meeting.
I will also speak about America’s need for “The Presumption of Grace,” the absence of which has decimated our capacity to meet our challenges and darkened the soul of this nation.
And I will give my buoyant thoughts on how to fix this significant problem.
Please register HERE to listen, watch, and join in the conversation.
Presented in conjunction with the Political Voices Network.
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It is cliché honored more by some (say, me) than others (say, certain congressional leaders).
We should all hope and pray for the great, unambiguous success of every new American president.
Joe Biden’s triumphs starting on January 20, 2021, should be fully embraced by all of us as the country’s triumphs.
It is a major part of the absence of “The Presumption of Grace” that everyone reading these words knows that some of the loudest and most influential voices on the national town square don’t really hope Joe Biden succeeds, just as, four years ago, plenty of the same kinds of voices lodged on the Blue side of the national town square manifestly wanted Donald Trump to fail.
I’m not ideological; I’m patriotic and journalistic.
Again: I want Joe Biden to succeed.
I am not predicting his failure.
But I am officially concerned that today’s snapshot indication of where he will start his tenure is not rosy.
There is nothing in the Constitution that specifies a new president gets a honeymoon period, in good times or (as now) bad times. Not for 1,000 days, or 200, or 100, or 10.
Bill Clinton was among many recent presidents who got off to a rocky start -- but recovered.
There is a very real possibility that Joe Biden never lifts off.
The combination of short-term, immediate circumstances and some longer-term realities makes the odds of an administration that simply limps back and forth between hard place and rock not insignificant, especially given the stakes.
Consider:
1. The apparent failure to consult with Congress on the decision to announce the intended nomination of Neera Tanden to run the Office of Management and Budget is nothing short of stunning, as is the transition’s failure to have an explanation at the ready about her deleted tweets (which will only become more infamous). When running against Donald Trump, Team Biden could get away with trying to change the terrain and the subject by saying stuff like that Tanden grew up benefiting from government programs and that Bill Kristol supports her confirmation. My analysis is that such well-meaning, gimmicky spin is not going to work as well here and going forward as it did for most of 2020.
2. And if Democrats want to comfort themselves with the notion that the Tanden Matter will give the right the symbolic sacrifice they require thus allowing other Biden nominees to sail through the Senate, they need to do a simple science experiment.
Required:
1 small shark tank
1 large bag of blood
1 very large shark
1 human arm
Directions:
Place blood and shark in tank and stir blood in gently. Place arm in tank. Wait.
3. Although vaccines are of course on the horizon, Biden is going to inherit a major transcontinental mess that in many ways will out-horrify the conditions encountered by the incoming Obama-Biden operation in early 2009. Rising infection rates; overburdened hospitals and medical workers; quarantine fatigue; national warfare over how to close and open schools, restaurants, small businesses, etc.; expiring benefits and protections for the unemployed, renters, borrowers, etc.; a gridlocked Congress.
4. On that last point, to illustrate how dire things are, one of the Democratic Party’s most fabled strategists, Rahm Emanuel, has a fantabulist’s take in a Wall Street Journal op ed “arguing” how Biden can get Capitol Hill to work together, the far-fetched basis of which is to use executive orders to entice congressional Republicans to work with the administration:
The White House should look to executive actions that can spur legislative action …And once Mr. Biden has pushed as far as he can go with executive action, he can push Congress to enshrine that policy in federal law.
And the issues Mr. Emanuel offers up to break the “Senate Stonewall” are (I kid you not) a minimum wage increase, the Green New Deal, and immigration.
5. Yes, Democrats could win both Georgia Senate seats. But they could also lose them both, and perhaps soundly. Biden might be a master of the Senate but how he would find a way to get any significant legislation through both Mitch McConnell’s House of Lords and Nancy Pelosi’s Chamber of the People is a real mystery still.
6. Team Biden has brilliantly finessed the left so far (although Tanden’s announced nomination is testing that, as she does the near-impossible of uniting certain quadrants of the Redlands and the Bluelands…). But/and there are a lot more personnel and policy decisions coming up that will stress those bonds.
7. Whatever Donald Trump decides to do about his speech in Georgia Saturday, about endgame pardons and executive orders, about attending the inauguration, about positioning to run in 2024, about anything and everything else between now and January 20 (and beyond….), it is safe to say that he will be mobilizing at every turn as many of the 74 million people who voted for him to oppose Joe Biden as he can.
8. Ditto the likes of other 2024 aspirants, especially in the Senate (Cotton, Rubio, Cruz, etc.). Sad, clear reality: anyone who wants to be the GOP’s nominee for almost any office in 2022 and for president in 2024 is going to get zero mileage out of doing anything but trying to destroy Joe Biden politically.
9. The Dominant Media is (slowly but surely) turning towards actually doing things to hold Joe Biden accountable to the public interest and will by February not be matching the role that the Trump-friendly media has played for four years. This is of course good and right but will create big new challenges for the incoming White House. As will this: Team Biden and the election outcome have done nothing to tame the Trump-friendly media.
10. Other long-festering challenges remain and could flare up into major distractions or even paralyzing, all-consuming events in the blink of an eye: Iran, North Korea, terrorism, the U.S.-Mexico border, Facebook, addiction, family or health matters, and on and on and on.
Please, for the sake of our children, our grandchildren, and the planet, let this survey of the landscape be terribly overly pessimistic and wrong.
Let the members of Team Biden, which has proved adept in 2020, adopt to the circumstances of 2021 with valor, cleverness, and The Presumption of Grace both afforded to them and by them.
But then recall the oft-repeated words of Barack Obama during the period twelve years ago, when his transition was shadowed by the prospect that he would take over during another Great Depression:
"Is it too late to ask for a recount?"