Naw, that wont work, and he knows it. He will save his big guns for SCOTUS.
After losing the GA governor race, she founded Fair Fight, an organization dedicated to addressing issues with voter suppression, and encouraging voter turnout. She and her organization are credited with helping to deliver both Georgia and Wisconsin for Biden.
Is that worthy of a Cabinet post? I don’t know. But, she played an important role in this election.
An article outlining some of what she’s done, and who’s been giving her credit:
I guarantee he’ll lock down the circuit courts as well. Given the limitations on the Supreme Court’s docket, that’s where most federal cases end up getting resolved. And this will just be taking to its logical conclusion what Mitch started when Republicans took the Senate for the last two years of Obama’s Administration, when confirmations slowed to a trickle. Obviously Merrick Garland got all the attention, but Republicans also ran out the clock on several circuit court nominees that let Trump quickly fill those seats when he took office.
He may well let some district court nominations move forward on a “you name one, we name one” basis. In the past, nominations to those seats were heavily the prerogative of home state senators, although the Senate had been backing away from that as well as the politicization reaches further down the bench. I could see Mitch pairing a red state district court nomination with a blue state nomination as a package vote on the floor.
He might try, but lots of senators owe Joe, Moscow Mitch might find it difficult to make sure that a couple of his crew does cross the aisle when Joe dangles that Army base in front of them.
Moscow Mitch decides all by himself whether a nomination ever sees the light of day. It doesn’t matter if a couple of his crew would be ready to cross the aisle to vote for a Biden nominee if it never comes to a vote.
No, they can force a vote.
Right, but it’s not like people aren’t going to know that Biden wants to nominate someone. Again, I don’t think Mitch is going to waste his ammo on shutting down the entire senate. Although the election was not the massive blue wave they feared, the fact is, they did lose the top prize in this election. They probably lost at least one senate seat and maybe more, and while they picked up some House seats, they lost the House two years ago. They’re not exactly winning either, but they’ve capitalized on the opportunities they’ve had.
I have no doubt that McConnell will find ways to screw Biden but I don’t think completely blocking nominees is going to work. I suspect holding up some of Biden’s desired funding for things like Obamacare would probably do just fine as far as he’s concerned, but if he’s going to sink Obamacare he can’t waste ammo on being a nuclear obstructionist.
Moscow Mitch doesn’t live in a vacuum; he is the majority leader because his party knows that he’s cunning and evil, but not insane. There are Republican senators who could be vulnerable in 2022 and if they start feeling the heat from voters then they in turn will put the heat on Mitch to get going with the nominees.
They really can’t, short of replacing him as Majority Leader. And you’d need a majority of the Republican Caucus to do so.
I think you’re underestimating the procedural power of the Majority Leader. First up he wouldn’t be “shutting down the Senate.” The Majority Leader sets the floor schedule, he would simply refuse to schedule judicial nominees for a floor vote. He could schedule anything else he wants to – coronavirus assistance, executive branch nominations, appropriations bills, etc. – to show that the Senate is hard at work. Biden and Democrats will scream, of course, but eventually that will get old and the media will move on to other stories. It’s the Garland playbook.
And who are these “vulnerable Senators” you’re talking about? Republican Senators in PA and NC have already announced their retiring. Iowa and Ohio are ruby red at this point. Wisconsin? Ron Johnson gonna Ron Johnson, he couldn’t try to paint himself as a bipartisan moderate if he wanted to (and he doesn’t). I suppose Lisa Murkowski may hem and haw about bringing civility back to the Senate, but who cares? Let her rail against Mitch all she wants if she thinks it helps her prove her “independence.”
Again, secretaries aren’t administrators. That’s done by experienced civil servants. They are the President’s proxy, the ones that work with the administrators to achieve as much of the President’s agenda as possible. It’s more important that they understand what the president wants than that they be specialists. The specialists are already there, in the civil service.
I’m in Georgia, and while I’m also a big fan of Abrams’s voter efforts, I agree with you that her talents would be more useful elsewhere.
I saw her speak when she was running for governor, and I think a big part of it is that she is an extremely smart, charismatic speaker. Abrams gave the democrats in Georgia something they’ve been missing for a while, which is the promise of strong, competent leadership on the left.
I am casually involved in local politics, and most of the time in my non-Atlanta area we don’t even have democratic challengers for positions, and if they do run they aren’t strong contenders. She made it seem like it was possible, and I think people really clung to that in our current environs.
The point of putting Abrams in the cabinet would be to provide her with national exposure and experience so we can use her elsewhere. She’s like 46. Two years in the cabinet would be perfect.
Also, she knows a lot about voter suppression. I’d like the AG to work on that.
I think she would do best with what she’s already proven to be an expert at. Heading up a voting rights commission of some sort would be a good idea. Maybe head of the DNC would be a good position for her as well.
I suppose McConnell could do that, I just don’t think it would work out too well. I certainly agree that he won’t make it easy for Biden, but hamstringing totally and so blatantly as you’re suggesting is something that independent swing voters would immediately pick up on, and it would probably lead to the conclusion that maybe ticket splitting isn’t such a good thing after all.
A lot of the moderates who swung back away from Trump presumably with the understanding that politics would be a little more ‘normal’ again. So while I could absolutely see some of Biden’s nominees getting tripped up, and I agree that Biden’s agenda is going to be very slow going for at least the next two years, I can’t see Mitch employing total warfare just yet. If he does, I think the senate will change hands in 2023. He will do what he always does. He’ll wait, calculate, and then drag the opposition out to water and drown them.
I like how Obama appointed actual scientists here and hope Biden will do the same.
Of course here I am discounting someone else’s suggestion without making my own, which is poor form.
We’ll see. I can’t claim any special insight into what McConnell is thinking right now, and I may well be overstating the case. But one thing to consider regarding independent voters is that their participation tends to go way down during midterm elections. Those elections tend to be more about juicing your partisans, so it’s in Mitch’s interest to take actions that hype up the Republican base. Of course, he has to do so in a way that doesn’t unduly motivate Democratic base voters to get out and vote.
It should be an interesting two years. . .
I agree that scientific knowledge is a must but no less important is administrative and political acumen. I’d rather have someone who knows how to manage a department than someone who can analyze charts; an administrator can hire the very best chart readers and number crunchers.
Administrative ability, political savvy and (not blind) loyalty to the President are all key attributes of a successful Cabinet secretary, I’d say - you don’t just want technocrats in each slot. I also remember that Robert Reich joked in his memoir that about 25% of the duties of the Secretary of Labor could be carried out by an animatronic robot, greeting visitors and attending public events.
I think this would be the perfect role for her. She almost single handedly flipped Georgia and helped the folks in Wisconsin as well. She has experience in getting people registered and fighting laws dedicated to preventing voter registration from occurring. Get her in charge of national voter registration ASAP.
Also as someone who works in an Executive Agency, I’ll echo that the Secretary is someone who is articulating political aims, not doing the nitty gritty. The last few Secretaries of my Executive Agency basically said, we want you do to X, and the Civil Servants at the top figured out how to make it happen.