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WASHINGTON: US President-elect Joe Biden wants to “restore the soul of America.” First, it will need to fix a broken and divided Congress.
Biden is rushing headlong into a legislative branch punished for partisanship, name calling and, now, the refusal of some to acknowledge his victory over President Donald Trump.
Democratic allies, struggling to regroup after their own electoral defeats, harbor deep divisions between progressive and moderate voices. Republicans, rather than graciously congratulating the incoming president, are, intentionally or not, delegitimizing Biden’s presidency while addressing Trump’s refusal to accept the election results.
At a time when the country needs a functioning government perhaps more than ever to deal with the COVID-19 crisis, a reeling economy and racial injustice, the president-elect challenges Washington to do better than it has.
READ: Conservatives flock to alternative social media in the US election dispute.
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It’s going to be a difficult opening.
“The country used to want a traffic jam because it saw traffic jam as a way to protect them. Now the country is really hungry for action and progress,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist. “That is a mandate to flip the switch.”
However, the idea of a Biden term is relative, certainly embraced by Democrats who want to move forward with their agenda. Yet emboldened Republicans, who did not lose a single House seat but actually expanded their ranks and rejected many Democratic Senate hopefuls, see their own term as a blockage on Biden’s agenda.
California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican Leader, said the election “was a mandate against socialism,” intensifying the relentless Republican attacks, despite the fact that Biden is a centrist Democrat.
Biden comes to the presidency like few others in recent history, with a rare combination of experience, but also with a potentially divided Congress.
Not since President George HW Bush has the White House had an executive with such a deep resume in Washington. Rarely in modern times has a Democrat started an administration without a full Democratic Congress. While the House is in Democratic hands, the Senate remains undecided, a 50-48 lead for Republicans heading into a January 5 runoff for two seats in Georgia that will determine control of the party.
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When asked last week how he will be able to work with Republicans if they don’t recognize his victory, Biden said, “They will.”
What Biden is presenting is a new normal in Washington that he said voters demanded from the election. “If we can decide not to cooperate, then we can decide to cooperate,” he said in his election victory speech.
Much has been made of Biden’s relationship with the Capitol, where he served as a senator for 36 years, particularly his negotiation as Barack Obama’s vice president with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
However, McConnell has not revived that approach as it allows Trump to delve into a legal battle based on unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud, even as state officials say the elections went smoothly and there is no widespread evidence of fraudulent voting. McConnell won his own reelection in Kentucky.
Whether McConnell emerges in the new Congress as a majority or minority leader with a narrowly divided Senate, the longest-serving Republican leader in history will have a major influence on the legislation that reaches Biden’s desk.
Biden could look for a reprise of the Newt Gingrich era when the Republican Speaker of the House offered legislative victories to President Bill Clinton, infuriating Democrats with conservative budget and welfare bills, but helping Clinton win a second. mandate.
Or Biden could find McConnell re-executing his politically charged Republican blockade of the Obama agenda. Hopes of overcoming McConnell by ending Senate obstructionism, which would allow bills to advance by a simple majority rather than a 60-vote threshold, are slipping away without Democratic control.
“Gingrich insisted that the American people loved him,” said Rick Tyler, a former Gingrich senior adviser who left the Republican Party in the Trump era. He said McConnell will advance Biden’s agenda when Biden has the nation behind him.
“This is how you do it. Let’s see if Biden can do it,” he said.
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But it’s not just McConnell. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and even McCarthy will all have oversized roles due to the new structure of Congress.
Biden faces a restless liberal flank, driven by a new generation of high-profile progressives, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They helped achieve your victory and may not be as eager to commit to health care, climate change, income inequality, and racial justice issues that have growing popular support.
At the same time, while Pelosi and Schumer have a long history with Biden, McCarthy is close to Trump, who is expected to have great influence over Republicans even after he leaves office. With a smaller majority in the House, McCarthy’s ability to contest votes suddenly matters.
“They can, but will they?” said Jim Kessler, Schumer’s former assistant and executive vice president of the center-left think tank Third Way.
“This is a really veteran group of people. They know how to get things done. They know how to keep things from getting done.”
An early test for Biden will be cabinet nominations, which can be approved with just 51 votes in the Senate.
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Republicans can also lock in nominees with time-consuming procedural hurdles that could quickly paralyze the new administration if top positions become vacant. Democrats did so much for Trump, in some way as revenge after McConnell blocked Obama’s Supreme Court candidate Merrick Garland.
“I think there is a possibility that Mitch McConnell Merrick Garland will all the cabinet nominees and force Joe Biden to negotiate on each and every one of them,” said Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn.
“Trump will continue to lead the Republican Party. And then actually Joe Biden may have to negotiate every cabinet election with Donald Trump. “
