To begin, the senior members of Biden’s White House who have already been announced are both remarkably experienced in federal government and with Biden specifically (e.g., Ron Klain, Mike Donilon). They are also diverse (five of the first nine are women). This is no surprise, given CNN’s report that on the transition team “41% of the senior staff are people of color. The majority of transition staff — 52% — are women, and 53% of the senior staff are women.”
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Second, Biden consults experts, not cronies.
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Third, traditional and bipartisan foreign policy seems to be the order of the day. Biden’s readouts of calls with foreign leaders seem like messages from a time capsule buried at Foggy Bottom before the Trump presidency.
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Fourth, Biden focuses on a few, top-level policy issues: the pandemic, his economic “Build Back Better” plan and possible executive orders (e.g., rejoining the Paris climate accords, reversing Trump’s actions on DACA and undoing Trump’s travel ban targeting majority-Muslim countries).
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Fifth, we do not hear from Biden every day.
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Finally, Biden absorbs rather than magnifies chaos and conflict. He does not condemn Republicans for playing along with Trump’s delusional insistence that he won the election. Nor does he excoriate Republicans for foot-dragging since the House passed its bill in May ; instead, he talks to Democratic leaders about a lame-duck stimulus. His lawyers and staff can punch back as necessary, but he is trying his best not to personalize disputes with members of Congress. He knows that in a matter of weeks, he will need their help.
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The most remarkable part of President-elect Biden’s campaign and early picks for positions of true power is the unremarkable — and predictable — nature of his big moves.
Why it matters: Biden is obsessed with bringing stability and conventional sanity back to governance. “He is approaching this — in part — like an experienced mechanic intent on repairing something that’s been badly broken,” said one source familiar with the president-elect’s thinking.
The picks — including Tony Blinken for secretary of state, which leaked last night and is to be announced tomorrow — fit with Biden’s penchant for sticking to comfort foods when it comes to people, policies and political techniques.
"He knows everybody. But these are the people he really knows, and he’s going with 'em," a former Obama-Biden official told Axios.
The official said: “Biden wants process. Trump was the anti-process guy. Their idea is that process is their friend.”
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Other longtime Biden hands on the new White House team:
Senior adviser Mike Donilon has been an adviser and consultant to Biden since 1981.
Chief of staff Ron Klain, who first worked for Sen. Joe Biden in the late '80s, was later Biden’s chief of staff as vice president, then White House Ebola response coordinator.
Cathy Russell, the White House director of presidential personnel, worked on Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign and was chief of staff to Dr. Jill Biden in the White House, before becoming U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues at the Department of State during the Obama Administration.
Counselor Steve Ricchetti went to work for Biden in the White House in 2012.
Jake Sullivan, a longtime Biden and Hillary Clinton adviser, is expected to be named national security adviser.
I predict plenty of people, Democrats as well as Republicans, will be screaming for “new blood” and accusing Biden of “refilling the swamp”! As for me, the descriptors dull, reliable, predictable, experienced, longtime, “conventional sanity” are music to my ears.
I don’t always agree with AOC and Omar, but I sincerely hope that the takeaway from the past election cycle is not that Democrats should run away from progressive politics - they need to be as stridently progressive as ever, It’s how to market that brand and what individual progressive ‘products’ they’re selling that matters.
I think Biden needs to sell the country on expanding the welfare state, and I can’t imagine how that would be remotely challenging. My view is that progressives need to drop the “democratic socialist” label and switch it out with “social capitalist” instead. But if Biden and moderates are timid and afraid to market progressive economic policies, they’re not going to succeed. I don’t believe in free tuition for all or across the board $15/hour minimum wages, either, but Biden and moderates can’t just use progressives and not give them something to believe in.
Trying to figure out if Nancy’s talking to AOC, et al, to bring them around to this current Biden cabinet, or, the other way around - to Biden, about them.
They’re happy with most cabinet positions, but with Bruce Reed’s support of medicare and social security cuts in the past, do they at least have a case with him?
Joe Biden isn’t president yet. But his incoming White House already has its first conspiracy theory to deal with.
It goes by the tag the “Great Reset” and under its construct a wild dystopian future is in store. The coronavirus pandemic is merely a means to enslave humanity and end capitalism. Biden’s “Build Back Better” slogan is really a cover for nefarious plotting of a global cabal from Davos, Switzerland, intent on abolishing private property and building prison camps for the dissenters who refuse to accept microchips that will read their thoughts. Even Grover from Sesame Street might be involved.
The Great Reset is a hodgepodge of one-world-government fears that has gained steam in the wake of Biden’s win. It’s been fed by right-wing media personalities who have told their audiences that Biden is bent on launching said reset by using the coronavirus pandemic to ban religion, crush small businesses, and turn humans into something like robots—or replace them with actual robots.
Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has declared that the Great Reset is “up in your grill,” while talk radio host Glenn Beck said the Great Reset is a plot to institute Nazi-style restrictions on American citizens. WorldNetDaily has called it a scheme from our “globalist overlords.” Pro-Trump personalities “Diamond and Silk” have warned their audience on Newsmax TV that Biden is behind the Great Reset plot.
“You know Biden said he wants to build back better,” Lynnette “Diamond” Hardaway said on Nov. 21 on her show, Diamond and Silk: Crystal Clear. “But no, he doesn’t want to build back better. He wants to take this economy and build back globally. You all, I know you heard about this thing called the Great Reset.”
Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham have also promoted the idea that Biden is a key player in a nefarious movement dubbed the Great Reset.
“His handlers, who are basically all old Obama staffers, believe in something called the Great Reset of capitalism,” Ingraham said in a November episode of her show. “It’s a plan to force a more equitable distribution of global resources.”
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Switzerland? You mean The Jews aren’t behind it? Not surprised to see Steve Bannon surfing the sewage. This smells a lot like the New World Order BS from decades ago.
President-elect Joe Biden pushed the Senate on Tuesday to begin confirmation hearings for his Cabinet selections in the coming weeks, a process that could put at least some leaders of the incoming administration in position to assume their roles on Inauguration Day.
"I hope these outstanding nominees received a prompt hearing, and that we can work across the aisle in good faith to move forward for the country,” Biden said Tuesday. “Let’s begin that work to heal and unite, to heal and unite America as well as the world.”
My bold.
I’m sure Mitch laughed his ass off when he heard that and whispered, “Fat chance!” Since he still hasn’t said a word about Biden’s election.
Biden and his transition team this week rolled out the names of his top national security staff, as well as nominees for secretary of state and ambassador to the United Nations. The president-elect held a press event Tuesday at his home base in Wilmington, Del., to introduce the nominees.
“To the American people, this team will make us proud to be Americans,” Biden said.
The path to confirmation for Biden’s nominees remains unclear as control of the Senate will be decided by two runoff elections in Georgia early next year. Senate Republicans thus far have exerted considerable caution not to run afoul of President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud by acknowledging Biden’s victory. Still, lawmakers including Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have all suggested that the incoming president is entitled to a cabinet.
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My bold.
That’s pretty radical talk! The President entitled to a Cabinet? A Democrat President??
Seriously, what do y’all think? Is the Senate, under Mitch’s recalcitrant (so-called) leadership going to stonewall/ignore Biden’s Cabinet confirmations?
I think it’d be counterproductive to stonewall cabinet picks across the board; the president is clearly going to wind up calling the shots at those departments anyway, so why not (a) make a big show of come-let-us-reason-together bipartisan compromise there so as to (b) have the optics be that much better when the Senate stonewalls various judicial picks?
They may not be geniuses, but they are probably smarter than that.
They will instead stonewall his legislative proposals.
This is true even if the Democrats win those Georgia seats. No way there will be 50 votes to end the filibuster, so the GOP can still stop Biden’s proposals.
It’s not that Obama lacked knowledge. After all, by your logic, all Barack had to do was ask Joe.
Because of a subtle change in public opinion, the Democrats may be able to bring back earmarks. If I am correct there, pork barrel may return for a different reason.
