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JBiden cannot be deterred. Donald Trump can still deny the new reality, create facts. Meanwhile, its people have adapted the Wilmington scene to the changing times. The back wall no longer has the “Biden Harris” campaign lettering. Now there is a white on dark blue inscription: “Office of the President Elect.” Above is the Great Seal of the United States.
Majid sattar
Political Correspondent for North America based in Washington.
However, Biden got carried away Tuesday by a little joke against Trump: He called his behavior “an embarrassment” and remarked that it would not be beneficial to his legacy. Regardless of the lack of cooperation, he continues to prepare to take over the official business: “The fact that they do not want to acknowledge that we have won does not currently have a major impact on our plans.” The Trump administration, which is not providing its transition team with the necessary funds or access to officials.
Biden’s most important advisor during this phase is his former confidant Ted Kaufman; leads the transition team. On Tuesday, Kaufman published a list of around 500 employees who, like government departments, are supposed to prepare to take on official duties. The “General Services Administration”, the central administrative authority, still refuses to formally determine the outcome of the elections and will not allow the transition team to have contact with government employees. But Kaufman made it clear that his people were starting their work and meeting with representatives of associations and think tank experts. Work is extremely important in ensuring national security, fighting the health crisis, and demonstrating that the United States continues to be the beacon of democracy in the world.
Kaufman knows what he’s talking about. He has worked on two laws that regulate the handover between a presidential election in early November and the inauguration of the president-elect on January 20. With thousands of political government employees replaced in Washington after a government change, the exchange between new and outgoing personnel in ministries and regulators is particularly important. As a senator in 2010, Kaufman was in charge of the Presidential Pre-Election Transition Act, a law that ensures that a transition team has limited access even before the election. In 2016, after leaving the Senate, he helped reform the law from outside.
Biden had appointed the 81-year-old Kaufman in the spring, immediately after his primary victory, to head the transition team. The two have known each other for five decades. The Philadelphia-born economist worked for the Dupont chemical company in Wilmington and supported the election campaign of the young Senate candidate in 1972. After the surprise victory of the then 29-year-old Democrat, Kaufman ran his office in Delaware for a few years. In 1976 he followed the senator to Washington and became his chief of staff, a position he held until 1995. When Biden resigned from the second chamber in early 2009 to take over as vice president under Barack Obama, the Delaware governor elected Kaufman to fill the Senate seat until the November 2010 by-elections. Kaufman is currently the most wanted man in Washington. Anyone hoping to work for the future Biden administration will have to see someone whisper his name in Kaufman’s ear.
In addition to Kaufman, Mike Donilon, Biden’s chief strategist on his campaign team, is the most important adviser to the president-elect. The latter declared in the spring that Biden’s campaign would have to turn the election into a referendum on Trump. It’s about character and values, not issues and worldview. The phrase that Biden put at the center of his election campaign is said to come from him: You are in a fight for “the soul of the nation.” Since the incumbent is trying to distract himself from the central issue of the election campaign, the pandemic, Biden has to continue to focus on the crown crisis.
An experiment in the electoral campaign
Donilon’s analysis turned the campaign into an experiment. Not to contradict her own message, campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon was only able to counter Trump’s massive final mobilization with a virtual campaign. Biden’s people knew that the challenger’s advantage in the disputed states was closer than the polls indicated. Donilon has known Biden since the early 1980s. Since then he has advised him in various positions. From 2009 to 2013, Donilon, whose brother Tom Barack was Obama’s national security adviser, was the vice president’s top adviser in the White House.
The third old confidant now back on board is Steve Ricchetti, his former vice-presidential chief of staff. Kaufman, Donilon and Ricchetti also formed the trio that prepared Biden’s presidential candidacy in 2015. After the death of his son Beau, who had asked his father on his deathbed not to end his political career after the end of his term as vice president, Biden kept one candidacy open. But he doubted whether he should do all this to himself. In the end, it was Donilon who advised the grieving father not to run: “I don’t think you should,” so Biden decided. Trump’s election changed everything. Again, Biden played his old trio. He is now preparing the 46th president for office.
