After reading a few days worth of carping about Joe Biden’s performance, I decided enough’s enough and responded at New York:
Joe Biden has been president of the United States for 43 days. He inherited power from a predecessor who was trying to overturn the 2020 election results via insurrection just two weeks before Inaugural Day, and whose appointees refused the kind of routine transition cooperation other administrations took for granted. His party has a four-vote margin of control in the House, and only controls the Senate via the vice presidential tie-breaking vote (along with a power-sharing arrangement with Republicans). Democratic control of the Senate was not assured until the wee hours of January 6 when the results of the Georgia runoff were clear. Biden took office in the midst of a COVID-19 winter surge, a national crisis over vaccine distribution, and flagging economic indicators.
Biden named all his major appointees well before taking office, and as recommended by every expert, pushed for early confirmation of his national security team, which he quickly secured. After some preliminary discussions with Republicans that demonstrated no real possibility of GOP support for anything like the emergency $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief and stimulus package he had promised, and noting the votes weren’t there in the Senate for significant filibuster reform, Biden took the only avenue open to him. He instructed his congressional allies to pursue the budget reconciliation vehicle to enact his COVID package, with the goal of enacting it by mid-March, when federal supplemental unemployment insurance would run out. Going the reconciliation route meant exposing the package to scrutiny by the Senate parliamentarian, It also virtually guaranteed total opposition from congressional Republicans, which in turn meant Senate Democratic unanimity would be essential.
The House passed the massive and complex reconciliation bill on February 27, right on schedule, with just two Democratic defections, around the same time as the Senate parliamentarian, to no one’s great surprise, deemed a $15 minimum wage provision (already opposed by two Senate Democrats) out of bounds for reconciliation. The Senate is moving ahead with a modified reconciliation bill, and the confirmation of Biden’s Cabinet is chugging ahead slowly but steadily. Like every recent president, he’s had to withdraw at least one nominee – in his case Neera Tanden for the Office of Management and Budget, though the administration’s pick for deputy OMB director is winning bipartisan praise and may be substituted smoothly for Tanden.
Add in his efforts to goose vaccine distribution — which has more than doubled since he took office — and any fair assessment of Biden’s first 43 days should be very positive. But the man is currently being beset by criticism from multiple directions. Republicans, of course, have united in denouncing Biden’s refusal to surrender his agenda in order to secure bipartisan “unity” as a sign that he’s indeed the radical socialist – or perhaps the stooge of radical socialists – that Donald Trump always said he was. Progressives are incensed by what happened on the minimum wage, though it was very predictable. And media critics are treating his confirmation record as a rolling disaster rather than a mild annoyance, given the context of a federal executive branch that was all but running itself for much of the last four years.
To be clear, I found fault with Biden’s presidential candidacy early and often. I didn’t vote for him in California’s 2020 primary. I worried a lot about Biden’s fetish for bipartisanship. I support a $15 minimum wage, and as a former Senate employee, have minimal respect for the upper chamber’s self-important traditions. But c’mon: what, specifically, is the alternative path he could have pursued the last 43 days? Republican criticism is not worthy of any serious attention: the GOP is playing the same old tapes it recorded in 2009 when Barack Obama (and his sidekick Biden) spent far too much time chasing Republican senators around Washington in search of compromises they never intended to make. While they are entitled to oppose Biden’s agenda, they are not entitled to kill it.
Progressive criticism of Biden feels formulaic. Years and years of investment in the rhetoric of the eternal “fight” and the belief that outrage shapes outcomes in politics and government have led to the habit of seeing anything other than total subscription to the left’s views as a sell-out. Yes, Kamala Harris could theoretically overrule the Senate parliamentarian on the minimum wage issue, but to what end? So long as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema oppose the $15 minimum wage, any Harris power play could easily be countered by a successful Republican amendment to strike the language in question, and perhaps other items as well. And if the idea is to play chicken with dissident Democrats over the fate of the entire reconciliation bill, is a $15 minimum wage really worth risking a $1.9 trillion package absolutely stuffed with subsidies for struggling low-income Americans? Are Fight for 15 hardliners perhaps conflating ends and means here?
Media carping about Biden’s legislative record so far is frankly just ridiculous. Presumably writing about the obscure and complicated details of reconciliation bills is hard and unexciting work that readers may find uninteresting, while treating Tanden’s travails as an existential crisis for the Biden administration provides drama, but isn’t at all true. The reality is that Biden’s Cabinet nominees are rolling through the Senate with strong confirmation votes (all but one received at least 64 votes), despite a steadily more partisan atmosphere for confirmations in recent presidencies. The COVID-19 bill is actually getting through Congress at a breakneck pace despite its unprecedented size and complexity. Trump’s first reconciliation bill (which was principally aimed at repealing Obamacare) didn’t pass the House until May 4, 2017, and never got through the Senate. Yes, Obama got a stimulus bill through Congress in February 2009, but it was less than half the size, much simpler, and more to the point, there were 59 Senate Democrats in office when it passed, which meant he didn’t even have to use reconciliation.
There’s really no exact precedent for Biden’s situation, particularly given the atmosphere of partisanship in Washington and the whole country right now, and the narrow window he and his party possess – in terms of political capital and time – to get important things done. He should not be judged on any one legislative provision or any one Cabinet nomination. So far the wins far outweigh the losses and omissions. Give the 46th president a break.
As I was looking through the detailed National Election Pool exit poll data, I came across the following question:
OPINION OF BUSH ADMINISTRATION:
Category %Total Kerry Bush Nader
Angry 23 96 3 1
Dissatisfied 26 82 16 1
Satisfied 26 11 89 0
Enthusiastic 22 2 98 0
In other words, a 49-48 plurality of voters was either angry or dissatisfied with the Bush administration.
I think this settles the question of whether the election was a “mandate” for Bush’s policies.
Yep JC, I agree with you and it is distressing. The only ray of hope I see is if they go too far right that the public opinion poll will shift against them. For this to happen we need to get the idealogues to stop harping on this election, take a balanced look at what is going on in Congress, and report it to the people though a mechanism that the common man can appreciate (sans rhetoric).
The fact that Bush won despite a below 50% approval rating and the decline of one important demographic, the female vote, should be a clue about what happened in this election.
The attacks on 9/11 and subsequent wars have put the fear in the electorate. That situation can’t help but favor the incumbent. Details about pre-9/11 negligence, inept management of an unneccesary war aside, I believe the public is possessed with fear. The incredibly negative campaign against John Kerry raised just enough doubt to allow a Bush win.
For those two reasons, I think the demographics gathered in this campaign are of no real value.
Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg has come up with some rather amazing data in his post-election survey that is directly relevant to the ‘mandate’ business:
“There was not a shift to the right. This was a tolerant, outward-looking, change-oriented electorate that elected George Bush. The country was not looking for a conservative president or a conservative regime, though that is what it has achieved.”
“What you’ll see in this data is that there was a large majority of the electorate and particularly pivotal portions of the electorate that were not looking for an election that was going to be settled on issues of security and safety, but were looking for an election that was about their lives and about economic issues and about health care. But in the end they did not think that they were given that choice in this election. And many of those voters held back until the end, and what we see in the end is many rural voters, many older blue collar voters and seniors who moved sharply toward the president on moral issues. The were clearly not going to vote that way until they did not get the choice that would have made it possible.”
“By 52 to 41 percent the voters who ended up voting for George Bush said the country was on the wrong track. They said what they were looking for was a candidate that was going to talk about things central to their lives–the economy and health care– as opposed to safety. In my view, this debate did not get joined in a central enough way, to keep the cultural issues from becoming dominant and moving these voters at the end.”
There *might* be one reason to doubt that Bush will *succeed* in his mission to force a radical agenda down our throats. Fillibuster. The 55 Dems plus a couple of the blue state moderate Republicans might be all we need to stop SS privatization, tax “simplification” and right wing judges. But we have to be able to make sure all our Senators can hold up under the pressure. Surely that’s *possible* if Bush goes too far too fast.
I’m not particularly hopeful:-(
Keith
The Democrats need to retake the senate now! Here’s how…
The background:
Several events in the past few days have shown that the most
radical members of the senate are planning to move aggressively
on their agenda, especially with regard to judicial appointments
and tax cuts.
For example, Arlen Spector is now in trouble for stating that the
senate may not be willing to confirm anti-abortion Supreme Court
judges. This was not a threat, just an observation, but the radicals
are already planning a punishment.
On the other side the senators from NY, CT and NJ are thinking of
dropping out in favor of becoming governors in 2006. They think
they might be more effective, since there is very little they can
do in the senate.
Several moderate Republicans have expressed concern about the
size of the deficit and the balance of trade. The radicals,
however, are threatening to give anyone who is independent the
“Daschle” treatment.
The solution:
The Democrats need to make an appeal to the moderate Republicans
to leave their party and join the Democrats. In addition to
Spector, good candidates are Chafee, Snowe, Voinovich and Collins.
For this to work the Democrats need to find six Republicans that
will all switch together. This will give the Democrats a majority
in the senate and enable them to negotiate the coming legislation
and nominations from an equal position of strength.
This is not as far-fetched as it may seem, several of these
senators are unlikely to run again (Spector has just be
re-elected, for example) and thus don’t have to fear the
lack of election support. With the Democrats in the majority
they also won’t have to worry about retaliation from the
Republicans for support of local projects.
As an incentive, the Democrats should offer these members new
powers such as committee chairmanships and other perks. If
the Republican senators have a problem with declaring themselves
as Democrats (such as what happened with Jeffords) they could
instead create a non-party structure to affiliate these new
allies with. Some name suggestions: “The alliance of responsible
legislators”, “The non-partisan alliance”, “The fiscal moderates
caucus”, etc. This group will caucus with the Democrats and vote
as a block for committee assignments and for those issues on
which they have overall agreement. The Republican members would
still be free to vote with their prior party when they feel they
have to for political or local reasons.
By sweetening the offer enough the Republican moderates will come
as a winners both in terms of their power in the senate and with
their voters back home. They can point to their newfound powers
as a way to promote the interests of their state. While in the
present alignment they are barely tolerated.
The Democrats need to stop despairing and get to work!
I may be incorrect, but while the article is definitely true, and I agree completely that the idea there is a “mandate” is absurd, there is also the practical political reality – and it seems to me this political reality is that the Frist, Hastert, Delay, and the White House, ARE going to be able to push pretty much anything they want through the Congress. Just as a matter of power politics, this seems to be the case, irregardless of whether the public lines up with the goals.
If there are reasons to doubt my above assertion, I would be MOST pleased…