FIRST BIG DECISION FOR THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: THE CLOCK TICKS

 

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office January 20, assuming the burden of righting the American ship. They have a big job and not long for getting it done.  They’ll have

tough decisions before long. Political reality and history teach that the clock has already started ticking on what they can accomplish.

Presidential terms run four years, but windows of opportunity for passing major legislation close quickly under the weight of pent-up frustrations in a president’s own party, approaching mid-term elections, and opposition candidates revving their engines on runways for the next presidential race. Biden enjoys no exemption from this cruel cycle. Anyone looking hard enough can 

see it looming in the distance.

Biden’s Burden

Biden’s first days have made clear his priorities: (1) get the pandemic under control,(2) fix the related economic problems, (3) address climate change, and (4) attack racial injustice. Biden’s team acknowledges things like infrastructure, tax reform, and rectifying some of former President Donald Trump’s  excesses must wait. That array of priorities creates challenges and opportunities.

Fires rage around the four priorities and many reasons exist for tackling them first.  The country watches carefully. Other than the rabid COVID-19 deniers, most Americans want an end to the death, pain, and personal sacrifice that go with the pandemic.  We can’t imagine anyone being happy with the job losses and business disruption. Many of us have been railing about climate change and racial injustice for years. A strong desire exists for taking on Biden’s targeted issues.

That doesn’t mean his solutions will get unanimous support, or even enough for solid progress. He has offered big, bold proposals for dealing with all four problems. He wants, for example, a $1.9 trillion COVID-19

relief package that includes big stimulus checks, minimum wage increases, significant dollars for cash-strapped state and local governments, and vaccine distribution money.

That’s where the hard choices come. Because Biden’s proposals will draw Republican opposition – even obstruction – he soon must choose between proceeding in the bipartisan way he prefers and taking what he can get with only Democratic support. Thanks to Harris as vice president, he enjoys a one-vote majority in the senate. Speaker Nancy Pelosi presides over a narrow Democratic advantage in the House. Biden has so far refused invitations to set deadlines, but everyone expects a day of reckoning will come. He can keep seeking bipartisan approval or go it alone, knowing he must act quickly or lose his chance. 

 

The Politics

Right now, Biden’s Democratic support results from a coalition of the willing. Moderate

Democrats cut in the mold of senators like Dick Durban of Illinois and John Hickenlooper, a rookie from Colorado, and progressives like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and New York Representative Alexandria

Ocasio Cortez remain on board. Nobody knows how long Biden (and Harris) can keep this fragile alliance together. He’s avoided a fracture by making cabinet and staff appointments that have something for everybody and issuing executive orders addressing the pent-up frustrations of both sides of his potentially divided house, a house motivated by intense distaste for Trump. With Trump gone, how long this glue sticks remains an open question.   

Across the aisle, some Republicans see the virtue in working with Biden. How many isn’t clear. It’s likely a small number in either house of Congress. Assuming the filibuster rule remains, if it’s ten in the Senate, Biden could get 60 votes and potentially pass broad legislation, like he’s proposed on COVID-19. If it’s one or two, or zero, he’s probably reduced to a stand-alone vaccine distribution bill many Republicans would vote for or something he could pass under budget reconciliation that only requires 51 votes. It’s hard to imagine what such bills would look like, but they won’t have the big, bold provisions Biden wants.

Many Republicans will say they oppose Biden’s bills – especially the COVID-19 relief package -- because of cost. Ordinarily they’d have a point, but under the current unique circumstances, their argument holds much less weight. With interest rates as low as they are, the government can borrow for a big relief package for next to nothing. Given how much the pandemic costs in health care expenses, lost tax revenue, and infrastructure expenditures incurred in fighting the disease, arguably the nation can’t afford not enacting a big package.  

A Little History

Biden should keep in mind Barack Obama’s

2009-10 experience with the Affordable Care Act. Obama believed he could get Republican support if he scaled back the bill by (1) leaving out a public option and (2) modeling the program after what Mitt Romney implemented in Massachusetts. Democrats screamed, but Obama held firm. GOP votes  never came and Obama, having lost his 60-seat senate majority with the

death of Ted Kennedy and the surprise victory of Scott Brown in a Massachusetts special election, settled for no public option and passing the bill under 

the reconciliation 

procedure.

Biden was there, of course, as vice president, so he’s  aware of the dilemma he’ll soon face. The fact the country wants COVID relief as 

badly as it does arguably gives him cover. If he can make real progress on ending the pandemic, many people outside Washington won’t care what he asked Congress for and did or didn’t get. He can declare victory and take on the next problem with good will stored away.

Biden doesn’t have forever. Republicans have started showing their hand, complaining about the size and scope of many of his proposals and asking why he hasn’t  consulted

more with them. Nearly everyone wants bipartisan solutions to the nation’s problems -- except those who don’t and, unfortunately, some of them serve in Congress.   

                     

BEHIND THE MID-TERMS: A FIGHT FOR AMERICA’S SOUL

Culture Wars, Self-governance, and America’s Future

In 1837, as Doris Kearns Goodwin writes in her new

book, Leadership in Turbulent Times (Simon & Schuster 2018), twenty-seven year old Illinois state legislator Abraham Lincoln said the “founding fathers noble experiment – their ambitions to show the world that ordinary people could govern themselves had succeeded” and now it was up to his generation to preserve this “proud fabric” of freedom. Perhaps the 2018 mid-term elections present another challenge to

show the world ordinary people can govern themselves since these elections will determine control of Congress, numerous governships,   and the balance of power in state legislatures in the largely unprecedented circumstances of the Trump presidency.  

This year’s campaign demands examination of two very different political approaches, approaches that will likely continue in the 2020 Presidential campaign, given Donald Trump’s almost certain presence on the ballot. The difference in the approaches of the two major parties generates as much interest for us as any individual campaign. Which wins will say much about the social, political, and cultural direction of the country in the next few years. Woodson would go so far as to say “who prevails will speak to the capacity of ordinary people to govern themselves and decide who benefits from democracy and who does not.” In any event, the elections reflect a battle for the nation’s soul. 

  

Some background reading

Two books provide a good starting point for understanding what’s going in the 2018 campaign -- What’sthe Matter With Kansas by Thomas Frank (Holt & Co. 2004) and That Used to be Us by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2011). Frank’s book reveals the game plan for most Republicans. Democrats, at least many of them, are trying to follow the advice laid out by Friedman and Mandelbaum. 

 

In a nutshell, What’s the Matter With Kansas details how Republicans have persuaded many white, low and middle income Americans to vote against their economic  interests. Rather than supporting candidates who favor tax, wage, and government spending policies that benefit them, these voters have often helped elect candidates who oppose those policies. They pass tax cuts tilted toward the rich, nominate and confirm judges who favor corporate interests at the expense of workers and consumers, and reject as too expensive infrastructure and job training programs that provide work for ordinary people or help them cope with the effects of globalization. Republicans have accomplished this by running cultural issue campaigns that appeal to the fears of low and middle income white America.

That Used to be Us isn’t as direct as What’s the Matter With Kansas and it’s not as much a template for Democratic campaigns. Nevertheless, the policy prescriptions in That Used to be Us on issues like health care, infrastructure, immigration, and economic innovation form the foundation for many Democratic campaigns we’ve seen this year and some Democratic gubernatorial campaigns.

The campaigns we have

As the election draws near, Republican use of the What’s the Matter With Kansas playbook has become all the more apparent. Increasingly, GOP television commercials rely on fear of hordes of brown people pouring across the southern border. Many ads are deceptive, implicitly or explicitly racist, and anti-democratic. Some Republicans, for example, present disingenuous positions on the

Affordable  Care Act, claiming support for its popular requirement that insurers cover pre-existing conditions, while signing on to lawsuits attacking that very provision or opposing it in Congress. Others run anti-immigration ads that dog whistle to whites worried about brown people coming to the United States from Latin America, supposedly bent on taking over the country.   

   

Republican candidates are not running on the 2017 tax cut (which is generally unpopular, given it’s favorability toward the wealthy) or the relatively good economy. Instead, Republicans invoke images of “uppity” (black) National Football League players

disrespecting the flag by kneeling during the national anthem, gangs of Hispanic youth terrorizing American citizens, and fears sensible gun safety laws will result in hunters losing their guns. Republicans ride that horse, hoping it takes them across the finish line first. They also now rig the system in places like Georgia, Texas, and North Dakota by changing voting rules, intending on suppressing the black, brown, and Native American vote. 

    

PhotCred: BrennanCenter.org

Democrats emphasize health care, especially pushing Medicaid expansion in states that declined that opportunity when introduced as part of the Affordable Care Act, economic wage fairness through a $15 minimum wage, and a transportation and infrastructure program that includes government funding for road and bridge repairs. Even if Friedman and Mandelbaum didn’t support every one of these polices in That Used to be Us, the book advocated the kind of bold governmental action underlying many of them because the authors saw the United States falling behind the rest of the world in innovation and economic development. 

A sign of just how different an approach the parties take in 2018 resides in the fact Democrats seldom campaign on immigration policy (except opposing splitting up immigrant families at the border) while few Republicans leave aggressive anti-immigration enforcement out of their pitch. Something has to give.

Who wins?

On the eve of the election, polls suggest Democrats will take the House, Republicans will hold a narrow Senate majority, and the intriguing gubernatorial races remain too close to call. Such a split decision would fit with our polarized politics. Regardless of who wins, however, the question of which approach best serves America won’t go away. Abraham Lincoln said America reached a point in the 19^th Century where the nation was called upon and succeeded in showing the world ordinary men and women could govern themselves. It seems we have reached such a point again, though Rob thinks that while we’re approaching that kind of crossroads, we’re not quite there yet. 

We want to know what you think.

 

BLACK GOVERNORS: MAYBE NOT SO RARE AFTER 2018

In 2018, the United States has its most intriguing, and important, mid-term elections in years. The big storyline resides in Democratic efforts to take control of the House of Representatives, potentially setting

Photo Credit: CNN.com

the stage for impeaching President Donald Trump.  But, in the states, an historic circumstance has developed that could equal the House races in long term political significance. Three black candidates – two men and one woman – stand as Democratic nominees for governorships. In a nation that has elected only two African American governors, that circumstance makes this a remarkable moment in the country’s 242-year history – even if none of them win.  What does this mean in the era of Donald Trump and the rise of white nationalism?  Is this a backlash against Trump? Can black candidates win statewide office in this environment?   

The Candidates

Stacey Abrams of Georgia – We devoted an earlier post to her candidacy, so we’ll limit our comments now to the fact her race against Republican Brian Kemp remains a tossup. The latest polling shows a dead heat.

Andrew Gillum of Florida – Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, shocked his state and the nation by winning the August 28 primary over better-known, better-financed candidates. He defeated onetime Congresswoman Gwen Graham, the daughter of former Florida Governor and Senator Bob Graham, and billionaire real estate developer Jeff Greene. Like Abrams, Gillum ran a decidedly progressive campaign, winning backing from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, despite attending the 2016 Democratic National Convention as a Hillary Clinton delegate. Gillum advocates a single payer health care system, LGBTQ rights, and stronger gun safety regulations. The early polling shows him essentially even with Republican Ron DeSantis, a Trump-backed Congressman who threw the race into early turmoil by admonishing voters not to “monkey up” Florida by electing Gillum.

Ben Jealous of Maryland – Because Abrams and Gillum are running in southern states, Jealous, former president of the NAACP, hasn’t gotten as much attention.  Maryland, decidedly blue at the presidential and senatorial levels, has an incumbent Republican governor, Larry Hogan, who’s far ahead of Jealous in early polling and fundraising. Jealous has some catching up to do but, because Maryland usually leans Democratic, he may still have a chance.

The History

History doesn’t favor any of these three candidates. Four blacks have served as governors of American states, only two of them elected in their own right. Doug Wilder became the country’s first elected black governor when he won in Virginia in 1989. State law limited him to one term. Deval Patrick won the Massachusetts governor’s office in 2006 and reelection in 2010. He retired after two terms. Patrick gets mentioned as a possibility for national office but, so far, he hasn’t pursued the idea.

Two other African Americans have served as governors upon being elevated from lieutenant governorships.  Pinckney Pinchback filled the Louisiana governor’s chair for about a month -- December 9, 1872, to January 13, 1873. David Paterson occupied the New York governor’s office between March 17, 2008, and December 31, 2010. He’d been New York’s Lt. Governor before Elliot Spitzer’s scandal-induced resignation.

This dearth of black governors, and the fact only six African Americans have ever been popularly elected to United States Senate seats, demonstrates the difficulty African Americans have had in winning statewide office. Blacks regularly get elected to House seats, and not just in black majority districts.  But, statewide races remain a tough nut to crack. The 2018 races in Georgia, Florida, and Maryland offer hope, but not guarantees, of electoral success this year.

The Problem and the Opportunity

White racism might seem an easy explanation for the difficulty African American candidates have had in winning statewide races. Many white voters just won’t vote for a black candidate, this theory goes, a notion perhaps undermined by Barack Obama’s election to the Presidency. Gerrymandering a state by packing black voters into compact districts, thereby making black victories easier, isn’t possible. No doubt the white racism problem partly explains what’s happened, but like most things in American politics, a more complex story tells the entire tale. Fund raising difficulties, especially lack of access to big-money donors, limited ideological and cultural appeal across a broad electorate, and low voter turnout in minority areas, especially in non-presidential years, probably all contribute.

This year, none of those factors need impede Abrams, Gillum, or Jealous.  Abrams, in particular, has already shown considerable prowess in raising money through small donations, especially online. Gillum’s primary win got him an immediate fund raising boost, with about two million dollars pouring in over just a few days. Presumably, Gillum now has a much better fund raising list. Jealous hasn’t done as well at fund raising. He had $9 million less than his GOP opponent two months from the election. Still, he’s patterned his campaign after Sanders and presumably knows the small donor fundraising techniques.

The gubernatorial opportunities presented in the 2018 elections give black Americans a chance at becoming more fully invested in American democracy.  Those opportunities, however, illustrate two things African Americans and progressives must do to take full advantage: (1) contribute to candidates of their choice and (2) vote. It’s really not much more complicated.