It’s now clear that Joe Biden will be thenext president of the United States. After days of staring atSteve Kornacki and John King explaining incoming vote totals, Americans fromNew York toAtlanta, fromBoston toLos Angeles danced in the streets as the curtain closed on Donald Trump’s four years in office. Now what?
Biden impressivelyrebuilt the “blue wall” across the industrial Midwest and is currently leading in the Sunbelt states of Arizona and Georgia. But in Congress,Nancy Pelosi’s House majority was slimmed, and the fate of theSenate depends on two January runoffs in Georgia. GivenGeorgia’s propensity for electing Republicans, it is likely that President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris will have to negotiate with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
During the primary campaign, Biden wasmocked by progressives for his belief that he could successfully work with right-wing leaders. Some may think that Biden is coming from a place of arrogance, but his belief is a sincere one simply because of who he is.
Biden was elected to the U.S. Senatejust over 48 years ago. He spent decades cordially debating, negotiating and having lunch with hardened segregationist senators likeStrom Thurmond andJames O. Eastland. Before the advent of cable news and talk radio in the late 1900s, U.S. senators could cut deals without drawing volcanic scorn from their own parties. It is no wonder Biden thinks he can work earnestly and in good faith with McConnell, because theyspent years doing just that when they were both in the Senate.
But based on what we have seen in the last few decades, it’s clear that Biden’s beloved Senate is not the place it once was. There is a new, young, hungry right wing taking over the Senate Republican caucus, embodied by Sens. Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley. WhenPresident Obama nominatedlongtime Senator John Kerry to lead the U.S. Department of State in 2012,only three senators voted against his confirmation. One of them was the recently elected Ted Cruz, who also went on tofilibuster funding for the Affordable Care Act in a ridiculous stunt.
If the Senate does stay in Republican hands, expect these three to be leading the charge against Biden from the Senate floor and their committee meetings. Biden often said he would have a cabinet that would“look like America,” meaning he would nominate an historic number of women and people of color to cabinet posts.According to Politico, Biden may nominate Susan Rice as the first Black woman to lead the State Department, while also nominating women for the top jobs at the Department of the Treasury and Department of Defense. Biden has alsopromised to put the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court.
But then we come back to the Senate.
I have no idea what a Biden-McConnell relationship would look like. But if it looks anything like the Obama-McConnell dynamic, we are all going to suffer through more years of endless cable news bickering and shouting matches in Senate committees.
