2020 US Elections: Joe Biden is Democratic Party Candidate and Former Vice President
Joe Biden may have the inside track on Donald Trump to win the White House, but his party’s otherwise poor performance on election night establishes a paralyzed presidency, with vague hopes of achieving liberal political aspirations.
If he wins, Biden would become the first president since George HW Bush to take office without control of both the House and Senate, promising him at least two years of stasis and stagnation.
In the immediate term, Republicans will have little incentive to give in to the broad coronavirus stimulus package that Democrats hoped could secure a major electoral victory. But that battle would likely be the first in a series of Republican efforts to stifle the Biden administration at any time.
There is virtually no chance that a Mitch McConnell-led Republican Senate will approve Biden’s planned tax hike for the wealthy and corporations, much less a $ 2 trillion plan to combat climate change that he hoped new revenue would fund. Nor is a Republican Senate likely to entertain expanding access to government health care programs, reforming the nation’s immigration system, or a major infrastructure package.
The more ambitious aspirations of liberals, from expanding the Supreme Court to granting statehood to Washington, DC, have even less chance. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who could face a leadership challenge and is sure to suffer losses for her majority, may be unable to provide Biden with crucial leverage in federal budget negotiations.
Republicans have already telegraphed that they are likely to rediscover religion when it comes to deficit spending, after adding nearly $ 4 trillion in debt during Trump’s first term.
Biden stood out as the only Democrat who could deal with Republicans in Washington, since his time in the Senate under McConnell. McConnell and Biden reached a deal in the failed session after Obama’s reelection that made President George W. Bush’s tax cuts permanent for most Americans, a compromise later criticized by Democrats.
But Biden may discover that McConnell is not the negotiator he once knew. Recently, the Majority Leader had to disappoint even Trump when he failed to muster the votes for a large coronavirus stimulus package – a sign that restless Republicans may be even less in the mood to come to terms with a new one. Democratic president.
Mitch McConnell during an election night party in Louisville, Kentucky, on November 3
While six Senate elections remain undecided, Democrats would need an extraordinary increase as states finish counting votes to win three of them, enough for the minimum 50 seats they would need to control the chamber.
His prospects of taking control suffered a setback on Wednesday after vulnerable Republicans led by Susan Collins of Maine fought back against Democratic rivals.
Biden’s concern is that even if he succeeds in his decades-long quest for the presidency, his administration will have few tools to enact his agenda or to address major crises in the Trump presidency, from the coronavirus pandemic to race riots.
Political circumstances can certainly change quickly in the face of unexpected events, as the pandemic earlier this year demonstrated. And Biden has long argued that his decades of experience on Capitol Hill mean his immediate predecessors are more likely to be able to strike cross-party deals.
His allies point out that Biden could end up winning even more Electoral College votes than Trump in 2016 while winning the popular vote by the millions, possibly giving him more mandate to govern than his predecessor.
But Biden’s claim of bipartisan success often appears to be based on a decisive Democratic victory that did not materialize.
“If we win as big as we can, there will be a great, great epiphany that will take place, as we Catholics say,” Biden said in July.
And having proven incapable of propelling Democrats in Senate elections in places like Maine, Montana and North Carolina, his ability to threaten or cajole reluctant legislators from his own party will be limited as he pursues his legislative agenda.
The upside for Biden is that he can face less pressure from the left flank of his party. He was reluctant to accept more radical proposals offered by popular figures like Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortex, the congresswoman from New York, such as his “Green New Deal” or expanding Medicare, the insurance program for children. elderly and disabled, to cover all Americans.
Now, Biden can rightly say that the votes are simply not there.
But liberals are already complaining that a presidential candidate like Sanders might have performed better than Biden, and that Biden’s victory, narrower than expected, is evidence that there is little enthusiasm for a center-left candidate. And a Biden administration will struggle to deliver on a landmark achievement – like Trump’s border wall or President Barack Obama’s health care bill – that cement his legacy and make him love his party base.
Your political vulnerability is only underscored by the fact that if you prevail and become the oldest American president ever elected, you are likely to face frequently asked questions about your resilience and ability to rule the world’s largest and only economy. remaining superpower. His campaign’s decision to largely avoid in-person events, citing the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, only provided food for Trump and other Republicans, who regularly suggested the Democratic nominee was senile.
Trump himself creates another significant challenge for a future Biden administration. Democrats clearly hoped that a reprimand at the polls would silence the president, but early election results suggest that Trump lost reelection even as he drew millions more voters to his cause.
He is likely to remain a powerful influence in the Republican Party, and there is already speculation that he could run for his old job again in 2024.
While Biden predicted before the election that Republican lawmakers would lose their “fear of retaliation,” Trump’s continued presence in American politics can only intensify those fears.
Furthermore, a Biden victory will have to resist a concerted effort by Trump and his allies to delegitimize his election. As early as Wednesday, the president repeatedly, and without foundation or credibility, suggested that the mail ballots being torn up for Biden were somehow evidence of fraud.
Last night he was leading, often solidly, in many key states, in almost all cases controlled and controlled by the Democrats. Then one by one, they began to magically disappear as the surprise dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the “pollsters” got it completely and historically wrong!
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020
In addition to the disinformation campaign, the president’s team plans a multi-front legal battle, with lawsuits already filed in Pennsylvania and Michigan in tenders to tilt vote totals in Trump’s favor.
But Trump’s push to foster suspicion of the election result also runs the risk of alienating voters who may fear their ballots are an unfair target, a narrative Biden’s team promoted Wednesday. If Trump’s actions further crack the electorate, they could provide Biden with much-needed political capital.
“There has never been a party that has launched a more sustained attack on the democratic process than the Republican Party,” said Biden’s senior adviser Bob Bauer. “The cynical undermining of democracy is so blatant, so transparent, and the legal strategy on which it is based so cynical that it is certainly going to fail.”
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
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