["President Biden will be under no obligation to hand Mitch
McConnell the keys to his Cabinet," progressive groups argue.]
[[link removed]]

A MEMO TO THE GOP, WALL STREET, JOE BIDEN, AND ALL DEMOCRATS: 'NO,
MITCH MCCONNELL IS NOT THE 46TH PRESIDENT'  
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Jon Queally
November 8, 2020
Common Dreams
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_ "President Biden will be under no obligation to hand Mitch
McConnell the keys to his Cabinet," progressive groups argue. _

A President-elect Joe Biden, warn progressives, must not allow Sen.
Mitch McConnell, if he remains Majority Leader, any "veto power over
how he constructs his administration." , Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Images

 

A pair of progressive advocacy groups is pushing back hard against an
emerging narrative that President-elect Joe Biden—declared the
projected winner of the 2020 presidential race on Saturday—should
submit in any way to the authority of Senator Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell, assuming Republicans retain control of the Senate, when it
comes to picking a cabinet or setting legislative priorities heading
into 2021.

In a detailed joint memo
[[link removed]] (pdf)
issued Friday that followed reporting from news outlets,
including _Axios_
[[link removed]],
that suggested that Biden will be forced to accommodate McConnell as
he selects top appointments during the transition period and upon
taking office in January, government watchdog groups Demand Progress
and the Revolving Door Project argued that this would be a deeply
misguided direction to go—one that would have disastrous
consequences for the new administration and the Democratic Party as a
whole.

"Wall Street and Mitch McConnell are arguing that Biden needs to defer
to McConnell in order to build out his administration," tweeted
[[link removed]] David
Segal, executive director of Demand Progress on Friday. "This
narrative is WRONG."

THIS!!! [link removed] [[link removed]]

— Jeff Hauser (@jeffhauser) November 8, 2020
[[link removed]]

According to the memo (emphasis in the original):

A false narrative, undergirded by self interest and misguided
assumptions, is dominating early transition coverage. KEY VOICES ARE
ALREADY INSISTING THAT JOE BIDEN'S PRESIDENCY WILL FAIL TO DELIVER ON
ANY OF ITS PROMISES. According to this view, with Mitch McConnell in
the Senate, Biden will not only be impelled to abandon his legislative
vision, but also any hope of delivering for the American people via
his power over the executive branch. They say that to wrest
confirmations from McConnell's hands, Biden will have no choice but to
appoint moderates who will not rock the boat.

THIS IS WRONG.

Over 80 million voters will have
[[link removed]] cast
their ballots for change. A reversion to a business-as-usual centrism
that enjoys no such mandate, at the behest of a Senate majority
representing a minority of the country's citizens, would be a
betrayal. PRESIDENT BIDEN WILL BE UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO HAND MITCH
MCCONNELL THE KEYS TO HIS CABINET. 

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, McConnell defiantly and
proudly asserted that he would "make Obama a one-term President" by
blocking a meaningful federal response. The insufficiency of the
federal response led to a midterm bloodbath for Democrats. BIDEN MUST
NOT ALLOW MCCONNELL VETO POWER OVER HOW HE CONSTRUCTS HIS
ADMINISTRATION.

On Sunday, the _Associated Press_ reported
[[link removed]] that
Biden will seek "to move quickly and build out his administration,"
with an initial focus on developing a coronavirus task force as a key
part of the transition and then establish other agency efforts as
well. But Max Moran, a research assistant for the Revolving Door
Project, explained
[[link removed]] in _The
American Prospect_ that it's important for Democrats to understand
that they don't "have to live in Mitch McConnell's world" any longer:

Biden himself may be an institutionalist, but he is first and foremost
the future president and current leader of the Democratic Party. His
duty as president is to shepherd the country though a deadly pandemic
and an economic calamity comparable only to the Great Depression. His
duty as Democratic leader is to keep his party from losing power in
2022, and keep himself or his successor from losing the presidency in
2024.

There is no way to accomplish either of these tasks while kowtowing to
Mitch McConnell. It is an apocalyptic delusion to think McConnell will
be reasonable if only Biden nominates centrist corporatists to his
Cabinet—that was the same logic behind nominating Merrick Garland,
and his name is now a verb[...] If Biden worries about passing
nominees through the Senate, God help us for any hope of passing
legislation, no matter how moderate and feeble. If, by 2024, the
Democratic Party's only argument for re-election is "well, we tried to
make a few tweaks to Obamacare, but darn it, McConnell behaved in
exactly the way everyone already knew he would," this country is
doomed to fascism.

The memo from Revolving Door and Demand Progress says that even if
McConnell holds the majority—as of this writing, especially with two
runoff elections for both of Georgia's Senate  seats to be held in
January, that remains up in the air—Biden will have tools at his
disposal to push through progressive cabinet members. According to the
groups:

* BIDEN CAN USE THE VACANCIES ACT
[[link removed]]. The
Vacancies Act provides an indisputably legal channel to fill
Senate-confirmed positions on a temporary basis when confirmations are
delayed. The Act has been used extensively by presidents of both
parties, including by Trump to an unprecedented degree, despite facing
a friendly Senate.
* BIDEN CAN ADJOURN CONGRESS AND MAKE RECESS APPOINTMENTS
[[link removed]]. Section 3 of
Article II of the U.S. Constitution
[[link removed]] gives
the President the power to adjourn Congress "to such time as he shall
think proper" whenever the House and Senate disagree on adjournment.
And after 10 days of recess, the President may make recess
appointments to fill positions requiring Senate confirmation.

"Failure to use these powers, however, will spell political doom," the
memo asserts, and warns: "If Biden fails to use the powers available
to him, Democrats up and down the ballot will suffer for it in 2022
and beyond."

We will not allow Mitch McConnell to rob this beautiful American
majority from governing.

We will not allow minority rule.

— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) November 7, 2020
[[link removed]]

Throughout the general election, progressives have called on Biden to
make sure his cabinet choices and top advisors represent the will of
the party's base that delivered him victory against Trump, not the
many corporate interests that gave generously to both campaigns. As
journalist and activist Kate Aronoff put it Saturday night as
celebrations over Biden's victory spread nationwide:

Everyone gets 24 hours of normie bliss but if you're not ready to yell
at Biden for shitty cabinet picks by Monday you never will be

— Kate Aronoff (@KateAronoff) November 8, 2020
[[link removed]]

Writing
[[link removed]] for _Jacobin_ on
Sunday, Matt McManus, a visiting professor of politics at Whitman
College, argued that the hard work for progressive movement and
Democratic Party will be shaping and enacting policies that get at the
root of the conditions that gave rise to Trump—one of the many
political observers warning that Democrats simply cannot afford to go
back to "the way things were" before Trump.

"After the celebrating is done—and make no mistake, we should spend
the weekend celebrating," wrote McManus, "we must recognize that the
material and cultural conditions that abetted the rise of Trumpism (a
variant of what I've called "postmodern conservatism"
[[link removed]]) haven't gone away.
If anything, Trump ensured that they've gotten worse."

"Our task over the next four years," he writes, "will be to push a
politics that ensures Trumpism is dead and buried."

To accomplish such a task, former national co-chair of the 2020 Bernie
Sanders campaign Nina Turner argued in a _Washington Post_ op-ed
[[link removed]] Sunday,
that the Biden administration and Democrats are going to have to get
real about delivering far-reaching and tangible results that improve
the conditions for working people, struggling communities, and a
planet under threat. According to Turner:

That means passing a Green New Deal to lift our economy out of
recession, create millions of jobs and address the climate crisis
head-on. It means passing Medicare-for-all to prevent thousands of
Americans from dying (or going bankrupt) due to covid-19 and other
illnesses. It means making the wealthy pay their share of taxes and
reversing the massive tax giveaway that was Trump’s crowning
legislative achievement. And it means electoral reform to ensure our
government actually reflects the will of the majority.

Biden and congressional Democrats led by Chuck Schumer and Nancy
Pelosi, argued Turner, "now have an opportunity to win a generation's
long-term loyalty, but only if they deliver the big changes young
Americans demand."

_JON QUEALLY is managing editor for Common Dreams
[[link removed]]. Follow him on Twitter: @jonqueally_

_Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely._

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