The Democratic Divide
With the results of the presidential election having been settled (even though the President still refuses to accept them), the Democrats are beginning to abandon their façade of unity and revert to their more customary formation: the circular firing squad. Members of the Democratic Party’s Progressive wing are not only demanding that President-elect Biden embrace their policy positions but also that he appoint Progressives to key cabinet positions. It seems that his selection of Kamala Harris, a self-proclaimed Progressive, as his Vice President has only whetted their appetite for representation in his administration. It’s not just the Progressives who are making these demands, Biden is being besieged by numerous other factions within his party seeking to advance their own representatives and agendas.
The unraveling began when the expected blue wave that was going to leave Democrats in control of the White House as well as both house of the Congress failed to materialize. Democrats lost 12 seats in the House and it seems likely that they will fall short of replacing Mitch McConnell as the Senate Majority Leader, a perch from which he can sabotage Democratic efforts to achieve a multitude of necessary reforms. Progressives blame Moderates for their Congressional disappointments contending that Moderate Democrats did not support the Progressives’ policy positions which they assert would have attracted young voters. This argument seems specious in view of the record-breaking number of Democrats who actually voted in this year’s elections. Conversely, Moderates blamed the Progressives for giving voice to policies such as “Medicare For All” and “Defund the Police” that frightened mainstream Republicans and Independent voters in their Republican leaning districts. Progressives, in response, dismiss that argument pointing out that some House seats in competitive districts were won by Progressive candidates even though Kara Eastman, a Progressive Democrat, lost her bid to represent a competitive Congressional district in Nebraska.
One pundit simply attributed Republican down-ballot gains to a better selection of Republican candidates (more women and non-whites). Another political analyst credited Republican gains to President Trump’s name and signature on the $1,200 stimulus checks distributed last spring. I personally believe that the down-ballot loses experienced by Democrats should be attributed to the remarkable job that President Trump did in motivating his supporters. Despite his long list of failures, he collected over 74 million votes which is more votes than any other presidential candidate, other than Biden, has ever received. To put it into perspective, it was 11 million more votes than Hillary Clinton had received in 2016 and Trump did it without apparent help from the Russians. This theory is supported by the election to Congress of Marjorie Taylor Greene, an unabashed conspiracy-theorist. While we may never know which was the principal reason for the Democrats’ down-ballot loses, the one thing that seems clear is that President-elect Biden’s victory has not and will not bring to an end the divide among Democrats.
Even though Progressives professed to be holding their criticisms until after the Georgia run-off elections, it did not take long for the Party’s rift to surface over some of Biden’s early appointees. Progressive Democrats contend that their wing of the party in large measure made Biden’s election possible and, therefore, they should have ample representation in his administration. A similar complaint has been voiced by African-American women who have suggested that Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms be included in the upper ranks of the Biden administration. Notwithstanding Biden’s pledge to make his cabinet a reflection of America that would include the Party’s up-and-coming leaders, his initial picks have been heavily weighted toward veterans of the Obama administration whom Progressives view as too old, too conservative or too timid. In fairness, the President-elect’s seventeen cabinet-level choices to date have included seven women and seven people of color, but fairness is not necessarily what his critics within the Party are seeking.
Lying ahead for Biden will be an unprecedented number of immediate challenges and he will need department heads and advisors who are devoid of controversy and with proven experience who can be confirmed quickly by the Senate. This is particularly important since the transition process has been truncated by Trump’s continuing refusal to concede defeat. Nominees with limited experience are not likely to be able to get up to speed quickly and those who have spoken out in favor of the Progressives’ agenda are not likely to receive a prompt confirmation. The problems of getting nominees confirmed and up to speed by inauguration day have been made evident by the fact that even those Senate Republicans who have been reticent to voice support for Trump’s efforts to circumvent the popular vote have already tried to display their loyalty to the Republican Party by attacking Biden’s nominees.
So far, the principal target of Biden’s Democratic critics has been Tom Vilsack, Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Agriculture. Vilsack served in that post throughout both terms of the Obama administration and has previously been the Governor of Iowa, a state whose economy is based on agriculture. Despite these credentials, he has garnered the distrust of both Progressives and African-Americans for having dismissed Shirley Sherrod, a black administrator in charge of the DOA’s Georgia operations who had become a subject of controversy after she was misquoted by Breitbart News. Vilsack is also viewed as being in the pocket of “Big Agriculture” for having served during the past four years as a highly compensated lobbyist for the U.S. Dairy Export Council. Also drawing criticism from Progressives is Neera Tandem, an Indian-American political consultant whom Biden has chosen to head the Office of Management & Budget. They find her too conservative based largely on her criticisms of Bernie Sanders during the 2016 election campaign when she worked for the Clinton campaign. She has also been criticized by Republicans like Senator Rick Scott of Florida who attacked her as being too liberal, but that may just be Republican code for her not being white. Another Biden appointee that has drawn fire from Progressives is Cedric Richmond, a black Congressman from Louisiana whom Biden is nominating to head the White House Office of Public Engagement. His sin is having been too close to the fossil fuel industry. Also in the Progressives’ cross-hairs is Brian Deese whom Biden has chosen to lead his National Economic Council. While a key player in Obama’s rescue of the auto industry, Deese is viewed with skepticism because he is currently leading the sustaining investing program of BlackRock Funds, a $39 billion mutual fund complex. Yet to be named are Biden’s choices for Attorney General and the heads of the Departments of Labor, Interior and Education who almost certainly will be focal points of criticism from all factions within the Party.
The real issues dividing Progressive and Moderate Democrats involve governmental policies, not personalities or campaign strategies. While Progressives stuck with President-elect Biden when he turned his back on “the Green New Deal,” “Defund the Police” and “Medicare for All” during his campaign, that was then. Now is payback time and they are likely to turn on him just as they abandoned Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. That’s because the Progressive movement is driven by ideologues who adhere to the view that if you steadfastly give voice to your positions, others will grow comfortable with them. They view compromise as being just as detrimental to progress as outright opposition. This attitude was exemplified in a statement aired yesterday on National Public Radio by Massachusetts Congressional Representative Ayanna Pressley on the issue of racial injustice. In that interview she said, “We don’t want unity, we want justice.” Past experience, however, has proven that politics is the art of achieving what is possible. That lesson was clearly demonstrated by First Lady Hillary Clinton’s 1993 attempt to gain enactment of a single-payer health insurance program which was blocked by both medical practitioners and medical insurers.
Even though Progressive Democrats may appear politically naive, President-elect Biden’s legislative strategy, which contemplates cooperation from Republicans members of Congress and from Mitch McConnell, is probably equally unrealistic. Even those of us with short memories must still remember McConnell’s quest to make Barack Obama a “one-term president” and his refusal to even consider the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Throughout the summer and fall he declined to join with Democrats in enacting further economic rescue legislation even though a stronger economy might have helped his own party’s election chances. Even on the few occasions over the past seven months that he did consider the Democrats’ economic stimulus proposals he insisted upon the inclusion of a liability shield for businesses which so far has served to undermine the passage of any such legislation.
More recent evidence of the level of support that President-elect Biden can expect to receive from Republicans can be seen in the fact that 126 Republican member of Congress supported the efforts of the Texas Attorney General to have the U.S. Supreme Court invalidate the results of the elections in the States of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. This effort was so flawed that it only took the Supreme Court (with three of its nine justices appointed by President Trump) two days to reach a 9-0 decision rejecting Texas’ specious petition which the justices did in a one-page opinion. If those legislators were willing to take a position in total disregard of the Constitution and accepted jurisprudence to support a candidate so convincingly rejected by the voters, it is hard to imagine that they will support any legislative programs proposed by the opposing party.
Progressives undoubtedly question why the Biden administration should be wasting its time appointing individuals and proposing legislation designed to appeal to Independent and mainstream Republican voters when no help from Republicans legislators is likely to be forthcoming. They contend that Biden should simply fill his administration with people willing to fight for the changes that the nation needs to cure its many current ills. As a matter of reality, most of what the Biden administration is likely to accomplish will be through Executive Orders and federal regulations neither of which need involve compromised positions. From this perspective, one has to question which wing of the Democratic Party is being realistic and which is being naïve.
At the top of the party’s agenda is to halt the spread of the coronavirus and limit the number of resulting deaths. This goal is closely followed by restoring the nation’s economy. Beyond those, there is a substantial list of other important goals including combatting climate change, righting the imbalance of income and wealth inequality, reforming the criminal justice system, restructuring the nation’s healthcare system, restoring the nation’s relationships with its allies and curbing gun violence. Even taking into consideration that many other issues (such as job creation, student debt relief, a federal minimum wage hike and reform of the nations’ tax laws) are encompassed by the above agenda items, this is still an incomplete list. For example, it does not include immigration reform or many foreign policy goals like resolving trade issues with China, arranging peace in Afghanistan, stopping the slaughter in Syria and containing North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The problem isn’t that Progressive and Moderate Democrats differ as to these goals; it’s more that they differ as to when and how those goals can best be achieved and their respective priorities.
Another potential area of disagreement centers on whether the Biden administration should concentrate on one or two issues deemed to be of top priority or move forward on a broad range of issues and risk the possibility that nothing gets achieved. For example, Progressives can be expected to urge President-elect Biden to move quickly on criminal justice and immigration reform even though those issues undoubtedly are not at the top of Biden’s agenda. These and other secondary issues are likely to galvanize opposition to Biden’s entire legislative program.
The conventional wisdom is that political capital has a relatively short half-life. This is evidenced by the fact that the party occupying the White House usually loses a dozen or more House seats in the mid-term elections. This is because a sitting president will have to say and do things that will offend some voters and cause them to lose trust in the president. This process usually gets accelerated by the opposing party and the Republicans are particularly adroit at creating and magnifying issues that breed public distrust. In Biden’s case, the problem may be particularly acute because Trump has already convinced roughly 80% of Republicans that Biden achieved his victory via illegal means. Trump is also likely to remain an active voice in national politics, constantly characterizing Biden’s actions and legislative proposals as “disasters,” a term which he uses as a synonym for something proposed or done by somebody else. Thus, Biden’s 7-million vote margin of victory may not carry as much political capital as it would otherwise represent.
In view of this reality, Biden would be well advised to concentrate at the outset on one or two high priority items that require congressional action. Agenda items that can be addressed through executive action should be deferred in order to minimize the pace at which his political capital is eroded. This is the path that the Obama administration followed and one that did not please his Party’s Progressive wing who felt betrayed by Obama for having side-tracked the issues that most concerned them. In Biden’s case, the pressure to attack secondary agenda items at an early date might be even more acute because the Trump administration has arguably left Biden with even more problems, as well as problems of greater severity, than George W. Bush left Barack Obama.
Even on those issues that Progressive and Moderate Democrats agree should be accorded the highest priority, there will be differences of opinions as to how they should be addressed. For example, on issue of income and wealth inequality, Progressives are likely to call for changes in the tax code including the imposition of a wealth tax as advocated by Senator Warren. While Biden may be able to engineer some tax increases to help pay for the continued fight against the coronavirus pandemic, tax increases simply designed to balance the economic scales are not likely to be readily achievable. Similarly, Biden may be able to expand the availability of healthcare by resurrecting or even expanding the Affordable Care Act to include a public option. Still, Medicare-for-All is likely to remain out of reach as it would put the nation’s healthcare insurers immediately out of business and the American public is a long way from viewing that as a step forward.
While Biden may now be basking in the glow of having overcome highly animated Republican opposition in the presidential election, he will have his hands full in trying to keep his own party on his side as he begins to tackle the problems that lay ahead of him. Realizing the enormity of the tasks facing Biden, Ro Khanna, a Democratic Congressman from California, has suggested that the only thing that may keep his party unified over the coming months will be the threat that Trump will seek to run again in 2024.