Clearly, as is already being acknowledged, the only hope (mostly) will be for a King Joseph to rule by Executive Order as much as he can.
But the Supreme Court is now dominated by conservative justices. So I think they will be much more inclined to strike down expansive interpretations of legislation.
In any event the President can’t spend money unless it is appropriated by Congress.
Here’s what the Democratic priorities should be:
- Pandemic protection and economic relief.
- Voting rights.
- Infrastructure.
- Immigration reform.
- Environmental protection.
- Trade and diplomacy.
- Tax reform.
There’s potential for a lot of overlap between these. I’m not sure what the best way to get stuff passed is, but my preference would be a series of simple, single-issue bills. The Democratic policies are popular individually and I think cramming too many things into a single bill makes it too easy for malicious nitpickery.
This makes me happy.
But for the next 6-8 weeks, we’re going to have two parallel government narratives playing at the same time: problem-solving v. destructive undermining and foot-dragging (for no reason that does the country any good).
Healthcare doesn’t even make the list? If SCOTUS kills off what’s left of the ACA, millions of Americans could suddenly be paying astronomically higher insurance premiums for pre-existing conditions.
I agree voting rights should be a priority, but that will be a delicate one. Biden wants to be a uniter, and 49% of voters may see “voting rights” “ways to make voter fraud even easier to commit.” They’re insane, of course, but it could be a minefield to enact anything.
Doh! I knew I forgot something.
That said, I was thinking about what Congress needs to working on. The new President can reverse a lot of the damage via executive order. You’re right that if the Supreme Court acts, healthcare will become very important. (I’d still put it below pandemic relief and voting rights, but there’s a lot of overlap.)
Ask and you shall receive.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/animals/major-biden-to-make-history-as-1st-rescue-dog-at-the-white-house/vi-BB1aQoyB
OH… I needed that! Thanks! 
Another article on this:
Okay. I guess Yahoo won’t let the headliner show. So:
The normal becomes noteworthy
…Yet instead of expressing his frustration, Mr. Biden this week has promoted calm. At a Tuesday news conference, he reached out to Trump voters, insisting that they, too, want to unite the country. He expressed hope that he would soon speak with President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and he declined to condemn Mr. McConnell for holding out on recognizing the results of the election. He underlined the urgency of Democratic and Republican lawmakers working together to pass an economic rescue package as covid-19 spikes. And he reiterated that he will be able to work with Republicans after he is sworn in. At times, he stopped to calibrate his words, explaining he wanted to keep his statements “tactful.”
Mr. Biden also confirmed this week that he intends to staff his administration with capable people who care about the federal government’s various missions. His coronavirus task force, revealed Monday, is packed with prominent public health experts. On Tuesday, he released an impressive list of some 500 transition advisers. The group brings deep substantive knowledge and experience — in some cases, decades of it — working with the agencies on which they will counsel the president-elect. Importantly, it is quite diverse. In short, Mr. Biden’s behavior should remind Americans of what competent, dignified leadership looks like.
…
Do you actually think McConnell cares about the Republicans in the long run? He cares about McConnell in the short and long run. He cares only about holding power.
How about a blow-up of one of Tom Toles’ Trump faces. They border on photorealism.
Besides the priorities that President Biden (woo-hoo, what sweet words) will have to deal with immediately because of the multiple crises the country is facing, there are the parts of gummint that are actually broken due to DJT’s neglect and malice that Biden and his team will need to fix in order for the Executive Branch to function.
President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to “restore the soul of America.” It is a worthy, poetic goal. Another, more prosaic objective also lies before him: fixing America’s plumbing.
By which I mean repairing the machinery of government, which has been corroded by Trumpian incompetence and malevolence. In the months ahead, there are at least three areas that need the Biden transition team’s urgent attention: policy, people and public trust.
The federal government is a massive, slow-moving ship. Even in the best of times it is often dysfunctional. But for the past four years, the Trump administration has deliberately made parts of government more dysfunctional, throwing sand in the gears in order to sabotage programs the president doesn’t like that are nonetheless required by statute.
…Last week, for example, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed a rule that would require nearly every regulation ever issued to automatically expire unless reviewed within a certain time. The goal seems to be to jam up the Biden administration, so it spends all its time keeping Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicare from accidentally blowing up.
Merely rolling back Trump-era regulations and enforcement memos won’t be sufficient to repair the damage if government infrastructure remains weak. And it might, without concerted effort to improve employee morale.
There have been purges, sidelinings of expert talent and voluntary brain drain across government agencies. Morale is poor at agencies whose missions have fundamentally changed under Trump, such as the increasingly anti-consumer Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. At least two targeted agencies, the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, were effectively dismantled; a sudden (seemingly punitive) forced move across the country led 75 percent of affected employees to quit.
…
This is a brief snippet from a long and disheartening opinion piece. To say that Biden “has his work cut out for him” is a monumental understatement.
After Biden has reversed the worst of Trump’s executive orders, I hope he does the unthinkable: Champion legislation that significantly reduces the power of the chief executive.
…The contrasts in Trump-era education policy and the incoming Biden agenda are stark. Ms. DeVos, a lifelong booster of private schools and opponent of the teachers’ unions, set out to reduce the Education Department’s footprint by proposing cuts to public school funding and narrowing the department’s enforcement of federal education laws and civil rights.
The incoming first lady, Jill Biden, is a community college professor and member of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union. The Biden administration has promised to drastically increase resources for public schools, expand civil rights advocacy for marginalized students and reassert department leadership in policymaking.
…Mr. Biden has promised to appoint a secretary with teaching experience and a deep knowledge of the challenges schools and students face.
In his victory speech on Nov. 7, the president-elect referred to Dr. Biden as he declared: “For America’s educators, this is a great day. You’re going to have one of your own in the White House.”
The Biden administration plans to restore Obama-era civil rights guidance — rescinded by Ms. DeVos — that allowed transgender students to choose their school bathrooms, addressed the disproportionate disciplining of Black students and pressed for diversity in colleges and K-12 classrooms. The restoration of those guidance documents can be done immediately because they were not put through the regulatory process or enacted into law.
…
Sic 'em, Jill.
Offhand, I’d say no.
“We need to tone down the political rhetoric … but we are digging out of a huge hole,” said Dr. Richard Besser, who heads the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and previously led the CDC. “Once you’ve lost trust, it’s very hard to get it back.”
Biden, who made unity a central message of his successful campaign, issued an urgent plea this week to Americans to put aside partisan fighting over the virus.
“We could save tens of thousands of lives if everyone would just wear a mask for the next few months. Not Democratic or Republican lives — American lives,” Biden said after meeting with members of a newly formed COVID-19 advisory board Monday.
“We have to do this together,” he added.
There are signs that some Republican officials are prepared to support mask wearing and other restrictions to slow the virus’ spread.
…
My bold.
The answer could be maybe…
Saving “tens of thousands of lives” is not a message that resonates. It’s too abstract, and to a rural red stater it could very well sound “tens of thousands of lives in the city.”
The message needs to be more personal: “This virus can take your grandfather who’s never been sick a day in his life. It can have your mom hooked up to a breathing tube for the rest of her life. It can take your kids’ baseball coach or your client’s wife. It can kill you.”
Although I’m still loving the sound of the words “President-elect Joe Biden,” I must admit I’m feeling gloomy and discouraged* about his administration’s potential for success.
By success I mean undoing some of the damage done (and still being done) by the t**** administration, NOT having Democrats turn on him and start blaming him for failing to turn water into wine within the first couple of months, restoring some modicum of stability in our foreign relations, and of course, finding some course of action in consultation with experts [ewww! The e-word!!] that will bring COVID under some kind of control WITHOUT the MAGAts and others (like Samuel Alito) accusing him of curtailing individual liberties. Not to mention the zillion other large and small dumpster fires around the country, both intentionally and accidentally set.
Does the guy have an ice cube’s chance in hell of accomplishing anything? I fear the impossibility of all he has to do will lead to a backlash of blame by both sides and result in restoring House control to the Pubs, cement their control of the Senate, and that a Democratic president will never be elected again.
Where’s that ledge…
*No where NEAR as mopey and discouraged as I’d be feeling if DJT had won. Perish the thought!
If we get the 2 seats in GA (less than 50% chance of this, IMO, but more than 10%), then he has a decent chance of some good stuff in the first two years. If not, then about all we can expect is better foreign policy, undoing all the shitty exec orders, minimal progress on good things that can be done with exec orders, and a better COVID policy.
If we don’t get the Senate, then IMO the focus of just about everything should be politics – focus on the swing Senate states and House districts for 2022 and “propose” all kinds of good stuff that would help people there, and demand that the Senators and Reps from those districts take action to help. And call them out on their home turf – even, possibly, Trump-style rallies by Biden in those swing districts and Senate states, calling them out by name as to why they aren’t helping to make things better.
With a nice hemp rope?