Mitch McConnell returns to his turtle home planet?
Reports say Cindy McCain can be UK ambassador if she wants. For helping AZ go blue.
Obama and Clinton had GOP members in their cabinet and Biden said he likely will do the same.
It’s an expected bipartisan gesture these days.
Not that it matters a whit, but Kansas should be on that list. At least until the next gubernatorial election in 2022.
Oh, good catch! Kansas gives the Governor unfettered authority to name a replacement Senator to a vacancy. So Secretary of Agriculture Jerry Moran? Senator-elect Roger Marshall opposes mask mandates and pushes hydroxychloroquine, so an obvious fit to replace Dr. Fauci. 
I would love to see Moran as Secretary of Agriculture, only for the fact that Governor Kelly would be able to name a replacement. That, however, will never happen.
And Roger Marshall is a licensed medical doctor, so he’s eminently qualified.
since being diverse seems super important to Biden I hope he gives a good job to a little green man from Mars. but I admit they are not easy to find these days
Whether that’s accurate or not, it is not to be. I’m very happy to see Jen Psaki named Press Secretary. She held various communications positions in the Obama administration, and I’ve always liked her. Whether she’s up to this very tough job remains to be seen, but I certainly wish her well. And what a change from all the lying troglodytes that the Orange Menace has appointed! I imagine being Press Secretary is a lot easier if you don’t have to lie 24x7.
If there’s one concern to be raised about Biden’s appointments so far, it’s that they’re almost exclusively people from this inner circle whom he has know for decades and whose thinking on politics and policy is largely aligned with his own. I know, shouldn’t that be something that a President wants in his advisors? And the answer is yes – to an extent.
But you also need the fly in the ointment, the voice in the room that is going to challenge the consensus view of a situation. I was disappointed to read that one of the reasons he may be hesitating on Michelle Flourney for SecDef is that in the Obama Administration she disagreed with his position on how to fight the war in Afghanistan. She may well have been wrong, but you need principled, sincere disagreement in an Administration to ensure that all positions and options are being fully explored. Otherwise you risk falling into groupthink.
It’s super early yet and I’m hopeful that as he continues to stock the Cabinet and key White House positions he will incorporate outside voices that will be willing to push back in internal policy debates and then salute when the final decision is made.
yes he has mostly picked Dem retreads. No surprise there. What do you expect from a guy who has been a DC guy since 1973? As bad as Trump is at least he picked non DC people , some of whom were decent. Of course Trump also had many who thought he walked on water.
I mean you are going to have plenty of that in Congress. AOC has already gone after Biden for some of his choices.
FWIW, Flourney is being opposed by a LOT of these left leaning groups who think she’s too much of a war hawk (her Afghanistan position was to send 40,000 more troops and a nation building strategy - which are also btw things that Biden campaigned against doing). That is likely the main reason for hesitation here - to see if there is a nominee more acceptable. You’d hate for say, Sanders and/or Warren to declare their opposition meaning they don’t get passed the Senate.
The other two who are said to be under consideration for SecDef are Johnson and Duckworth who are not Biden’s inner circle either.
I think Biden’s doing well with his pics so far. There will always be naysayers both from within and from the outside - Biden is as well prepared to deal with critics as anyone. His approach is the right one: you hire for capability first. Hopefully they all get through the grind, but some will not and that’s just part of the process. You quickly move on to someone else. You just hope he doesn’t select someone who’s a total head-scratching embarrassment that damages the perception that he can surround himself with qualified people.
I agree. So far, so good, I’d say.
And as to his pick for AG:
I don’t understand the frustration with the Hispanic caucus. When I first read that Lujan Grisham turned down the position of Interior Secretary, I thought, damn, she’s going for what she wants like a boss.
Nothing about the story of her turning it down seemed at all disrespectful to me. The Hispanic caucus making a huge deal about how embarrassing this leak is for her seems to be more belittling and disrespectful than anything. Like she’s some poor woman who just got manhandled by Joe Biden. “Oh, poor MIchelle, how embarrassing for her!” Fuck that, she’s a fucking governor who has plans for her career and didn’t jump at the first job the president-elect offered her.
I have to say, that was my reaction, too. These kind of leaks happen all the time. There’s nothing inherently racist, sexist or disrespectful about them.
Say what? I don’t understand how Grisham’s rep has been tarnished by not taking a Cabinet position. She can easily say I want to fulfill my promise to the residents of my state and look great doing it.
As to how it hurts Haaland? What?
Biden nominated Alejandro Mayorkas, who was a Cuban refugee, as Secretary of Homeland Security. He has experience; he was a US Attorney, director of Citizenship and Immigration Services and deputy secretary of Homeland Security (both under the Obama administration). Perhaps border enforcement will be less blatantly cruel under someone who was a refugee himself.
“I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat.” - Will Rogers
I think it’s ridiculous, and yet totally predictable, that people are already squabbling over the adequate representation of different demographics within Biden’s cabinet and he’s not even President yet. It’s just validating the right wing’s vulgar parodies of the woke left. For fuck’s sake, just let the best qualified people have the goddamn positions. My two cents anyway, not that it’s worth anything.