The Biden Presidency Thread

[Little Raven]

[Isgrimnur]

That only works if you can get the other side to agree. The bon mot is that we treated the Paris Peace Accords like a negotiation and the North Vietnamese treated it like another battlefield.

[Little Raven]

Sure, but unlike Trump, Biden is both pragmatic and aware. He knows that he won this election by a very thin margin, and that while he won, his party did not. He doesn't have the power to force Truth and Reconciliation Committees even if he wanted to, so his best move is to dial down the temperature as much as possible and hope for a repeat of 2018 in 2022.

[Jaymann]

Congratulations came in from...Jeb Bush. Trump has made a lot of enemies along the way and they will start coming forward.

[stessier]

I think Biden should start by having a private inauguration (televised of course) and no parties. There is no way to do it safely and saving the celebration until 2022 will highlight how far we've come (assuming we can gather again by then).

[Alefroth]

Sure, but unlike Trump, Biden is both pragmatic and aware. He knows that he won this election by a very thin margin, and that while he won, his party did not. He doesn't have the power to force Truth and Reconciliation Committees even if he wanted to, so his best move is to dial down the temperature as much as possible and hope for a repeat of 2018 in 2022.

Very thin margin? What does it take to not be very thin?

[Jaymann]

Sure, but unlike Trump, Biden is both pragmatic and aware. He knows that he won this election by a very thin margin, and that while he won, his party did not. He doesn't have the power to force Truth and Reconciliation Committees even if he wanted to, so his best move is to dial down the temperature as much as possible and hope for a repeat of 2018 in 2022.

Very thin margin? What does it take to not be very thin?

Four million votes, pah! Needs to be at least 16M.

[malchior]

Sure, but unlike Trump, Biden is both pragmatic and aware. He knows that he won this election by a very thin margin, and that while he won, his party did not. He doesn't have the power to force Truth and Reconciliation Committees even if he wanted to, so his best move is to dial down the temperature as much as possible and hope for a repeat of 2018 in 2022.

Very thin margin? What does it take to not be very thin?

Four million votes, pah! Needs to be at least 16M.

NY/NJ/CA are still counting. It'll probably 6-7M. And he barely won. 2024 is going to be a treat.

[malchior]

Uh no. Ford pardoned Nixon and all his minions grew up to work for Trump.

[Unagi]

Yeah: no thank you.

Take the 1 Mandate you were given - Trump is garbage, take him out.

[Smoove_B]

Issuing a pardon (IMHO) would be a colossal mistake - I know I've said this before. In no way (repeat, no way) can anything Trump did be excused or normalized. Issuing a pardon suggests all is forgiven. F.That.Noise.

[Smoove_B]

The U.S. will not be leaving the World Health Organization. Trump's withdrawal would have taken effect on July 6, which Biden has said will be revoked on his first day in office

[Alefroth]

Sure, but unlike Trump, Biden is both pragmatic and aware. He knows that he won this election by a very thin margin, and that while he won, his party did not. He doesn't have the power to force Truth and Reconciliation Committees even if he wanted to, so his best move is to dial down the temperature as much as possible and hope for a repeat of 2018 in 2022.

Very thin margin? What does it take to not be very thin?

Four million votes, pah! Needs to be at least 16M.

NY/NJ/CA are still counting. It'll probably 6-7M. And he barely won. 2024 is going to be a treat.

I mean, even his EC margin isn't going to be very thin.

[YellowKing]

Biden made it a point the other night to talk about a mandate. It's going to be important not to let the other side paint this as a razor-thin fluke of a win. It was decisive in both the electoral and popular vote, even if it appeared closer than it was for a few days. I will be reminding every Trump supporter that if his presidency was legitimate with an equal electoral vote while losing the popular vote, then certainly Biden's win is legitimate winning both.

[malchior]

Sure, but unlike Trump, Biden is both pragmatic and aware. He knows that he won this election by a very thin margin, and that while he won, his party did not. He doesn't have the power to force Truth and Reconciliation Committees even if he wanted to, so his best move is to dial down the temperature as much as possible and hope for a repeat of 2018 in 2022.

Very thin margin? What does it take to not be very thin?

Four million votes, pah! Needs to be at least 16M.

NY/NJ/CA are still counting. It'll probably 6-7M. And he barely won. 2024 is going to be a treat.

I mean, even his EC margin isn't going to be very thin.

It's much thinner than it looks. 306 is essentially a couple of states. In those states Biden might have won by winning a few coin flips in row. Obama won a similar percentage of votes and got about ~360 EVs. Reagan in his massive landslide over Mondale had a similar percentage of votes. Each election has some EV weirdness to it but the 21st century story is remarkably consistent. The Democrats have to win via a large coalition compared to the Republicans. And they need to have bigger and bigger coalitions to overcome the odds.

[RunningMn9]

I will never understand this. When the GOP wins, they ruthlessly do GOP things. When Democrats win, they endlessly fret over how much of a win, and if it was big enough, and if maybe they should try extra special super hard to please the other side (that can *never* be pleased).

The American People just handed you the keys to the car. Fucking drive.

[Blackhawk]

The U.S. will not be leaving the World Health Organization. Trump's withdrawal would have taken effect on July 6, which Biden has said will be revoked on his first day in office

Now on to the Paris Agreement.

[Skinypupy]

The U.S. will not be leaving the World Health Organization. Trump's withdrawal would have taken effect on July 6, which Biden has said will be revoked on his first day in office

Now on to the Paris Agreement.

Didn’t he already confirm that?

What time is Biden’s speech tonight? I’m seeing conflicting info.

[Smoove_B]

What time is Biden’s speech tonight? I’m seeing conflicting info.

I thought it was 8pm EST, speaking from Delaware.

I would expect Trump to announce that he'll be speaking from in front of a buttplug dispensary at 7:45pm.

[Smoove_B]

I will never understand this. When the GOP wins, they ruthlessly do GOP things. When Democrats win, they endlessly fret over how much of a win, and if it was big enough, and if maybe they should try extra special super hard to please the other side (that can *never* be pleased).

I don't think Biden or the D party should be doing anything other than figuring out what happened and how to build upon whatever the data is telling them was critical in this election. Zero - and I mean zero - energy should be spent on courting members of the GOP, deplorables or die-hard Trumpaloos. It's quite clear we have a nation of disgusting people that aren't ever going to evolve.

[Little Raven]

Very thin margin? What does it take to not be very thin?

Not taking 4 days to figure out who won would be a start.

Don't get me wrong, this was a decisive win. But when your margin of victory is 49.7% to 49.2% (Pennsylvania, as of this post) you're not exactly looking at a mandate.

[Little Raven]

I will never understand this. When the GOP wins, they ruthlessly do GOP things.

The American people handed the Republican Party ALL the keys in 2016. House, Senate, Presidency, the whole enchilada.

They passed a tax cut.

Doing stuff is hard, even for the Republicans.

[malchior]

Very thin margin? What does it take to not be very thin?

Not taking 4 days to figure out who won would be a start.

Don't get me wrong, this was a decisive win. But when your margin of victory is 49.7% to 49.2% (Pennsylvania, as of this post) you're not exactly looking at a mandate.

This is probably the worst definition of how to define a mandate -- in this system -- I've ever seen.

Edit: Maybe I'm wrong but I'd *love* to understand the logic behind it.

I will never understand this. When the GOP wins, they ruthlessly do GOP things.

The American people handed the Republican Party ALL the keys in 2016. House, Senate, Presidency, the whole enchilada.

They passed a tax cut.

Doing stuff is hard, even for the Republicans.

Wut? This is all you think the Republicans accomplished? That'd make for a heck of a t-shirt. We almost built permanent one-party rule and all I got was COVID-19 and a tax cut.

[Unagi]

I will never understand this. When the GOP wins, they ruthlessly do GOP things. When Democrats win, they endlessly fret over how much of a win, and if it was big enough, and if maybe they should try extra special super hard to please the other side (that can *never* be pleased).

The American People just handed you the keys to the car. Fucking drive.

Sadly, Mitch will have his foot on the brake.

[Unagi]

Very thin margin? What does it take to not be very thin?

Not taking 4 days to figure out who won would be a start.

Don't get me wrong, this was a decisive win. But when your margin of victory is 49.7% to 49.2% (Pennsylvania, as of this post) you're not exactly looking at a mandate.

Biden won the popular vote by a bigger margin than any other US president ever has.

The EC makes the race seem much closer. Not that it wasn’t a nail biter.

[malchior]

Interesting list - my only Quibi with the list is Meg Whitman. Why?

[LawBeefaroni]

Interesting list - my only Quibi with the list is Meg Whitman. Why?

"Donations".

[raydude]

Very thin margin? What does it take to not be very thin?

Not taking 4 days to figure out who won would be a start.

Don't get me wrong, this was a decisive win. But when your margin of victory is 49.7% to 49.2% (Pennsylvania, as of this post) you're not exactly looking at a mandate.

This is probably the worst definition of how to define a mandate -- in this system -- I've ever seen.

Edit: Maybe I'm wrong but I'd *love* to understand the logic behind it.

Trump declared his EC win with 306 to 232 EC votes was the biggest ever. And that's with a popular vote loss.
Biden's projected EC win with 306 to 232 EC votes matches it. AND he has the popular vote to boot. His win beats Trumps bigly.

[Little Raven]

Wut? This is all you think the Republicans accomplished? That'd make for a heck of a t-shirt.

Legislatively? Yeah, that was all they did.

Do you remember 2016? The Republicans were going to Repeal and Replace Obamacare, build a wall, redo the immigration system, reign in corporate finance, rebuild American manufacturing, bring back American jobs, balance the budget...you know, MAGA. They didn't do any of that. They passed a tax cut, did nothing else, and then got stomped in 2018 and accomplished nothing else in Congress.

Now, Trump DID do quite a lot outside of Congress. (mostly, he wrecked stuff) The President has a fair amount of power via appointments and EOs and the like. I'm sure Biden will use that power as best he can. But that can't give us healthcare or the GND.

We almost built permanent one-party rule and all I got was COVID-19 and a tax cut.

They were never anywhere close to doing that. The PRI kept a death grip on Mexico for over 70 years. That's a...well, not exactly permanent minority rule but at least minority rule with some staying power. Unified Republican control lasted 2 years. We have a lot of problems in this country, but domination by a single political party isn't one of them. When was the last time we went a decade without a "wave" of one kind or another?

[wonderpug]

Interesting list - my only Quibi with the list is Meg Whitman. Why?

Michelle Lujan Grisham is my governor here in NM and she’s been awesome with COVID for us this year. My only criticism of her COVID response is the weak measures taken in the past few weeks, but I imagine she was waiting until after the election to do her next big lockdown. She’s a fantastic choice for HHS.

[Little Raven]

Trump declared his EC win with 306 to 232 EC votes was the biggest ever. And that's with a popular vote loss.

Sure, but Trump's delusional. Biden isn't. Unlike Trump, Biden understands how power in the US government is gained and maintained. He understands that the popular vote is a nice but ultimately meaningless metric, and that because it's meaningless, neither party really competes for it. And unlike Trump, Biden understands that as President, his job is to represent all Americans, not just the ones that voted for him.

That doesn't mean Biden suddenly becomes a Republican or anything. We will see a lot of change under Biden, and pretty much all of it will be for the better.

[Defiant]

Sure, but unlike Trump, Biden is both pragmatic and aware. He knows that he won this election by a very thin margin, and that while he won, his party did not.

The Democratic party still won. Not by as large a margin, but it still won a majority of seats in the House.

[Defiant]

Sure, but unlike Trump, Biden is both pragmatic and aware. He knows that he won this election by a very thin margin, and that while he won, his party did not. He doesn't have the power to force Truth and Reconciliation Committees even if he wanted to, so his best move is to dial down the temperature as much as possible and hope for a repeat of 2018 in 2022.

Very thin margin? What does it take to not be very thin?

You have to lose the popular vote. Then you get to declare a mandate.

[Little Raven]

The Democratic party still won.

Kind of? I mean, we kept the House and we narrowed the Senate, but we got blown out in the state houses. And this was after we raised (and spent!) truly unprecedented amounts of money.

As far as waves go, it was pretty paltry.

[Holman]

Very thin margin? What does it take to not be very thin?

Not taking 4 days to figure out who won would be a start.

Don't get me wrong, this was a decisive win. But when your margin of victory is 49.7% to 49.2% (Pennsylvania, as of this post) you're not exactly looking at a mandate.

PA is still counting. The state was capable of being called because the math (which was already inevitable) crossed the .5% recount threshold. In the end it will be 2% or 3% for Biden.

"4 days to figure it out" had nothing to do with closeness with the fact of voting in a pandemic. Voting machines add up immediately; mailed-in ballots have to be manually opened, checked, and prepped for the machines, and then even the machines take time to run them through.

If we had all the numbers at once like on a normal election day, the narrative would be "Dems took some hits on the down-ballot, but this was a complete and utter repudiation of President Trump. Biden's mandate is clear."

[Little Raven]

If we had all the numbers at once like on a normal election day, the narrative would be "Dems took some hits on the down-ballot, but this was a complete and utter repudiation of President Trump. Biden's mandate is clear."

Really? We're not even running with that narrative on this forum, which is clearly way, WAY farther left than the country as a whole. How many variations of this post have we seen in the last 7 days?

[Holman]

If we had all the numbers at once like on a normal election day, the narrative would be "Dems took some hits on the down-ballot, but this was a complete and utter repudiation of President Trump. Biden's mandate is clear."

Really? We're not even running with that narrative on this forum, which is clearly way, WAY farther left than the country as a whole. How many variations of this post have we seen in the last 7 days?

Having a mandate doesn't mean the other side doesn't oppose you. But 6-7 million more votes and flipping the opponent's winning states tells its own story.

Of course it's also a specifically *Biden* (and Harris) mandate, not an "every Liberal's greatest dream" mandate. Biden doesn't now have a license to president exactly like Bernie or Warren, of course. But he wasn't going to do that anyway.

[dbt1949]

I'm sure Biden means well and will try hard but I really don't see things changing much except for more civil discord coming from the president.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

As has been said, if GOP legislations in PA, WI, and MI had allowed mail-in ballots to be prepared/counted prior to Election Day, the entire narrative would be flipped; we would’ve known Biden was going to win on Tuesday night and it really wouldn’t even be all that close. Those state legislators intentionally didn’t allow that just so we would be in this sort of situation where some people feel that Biden’s win was less convincing. And the fact that Biden won while many down-ballot races didn’t go the Dems suggests that many people who voted for other GOP candidates specifically chosen Biden over Trump. Of course, a mandate doesn’t mean much if Biden can’t get GOP members of the Senate to work with him.

[malchior]

Wut? This is all you think the Republicans accomplished? That'd make for a heck of a t-shirt.

Legislatively? Yeah, that was all they did.

Do you remember 2016? The Republicans were going to Repeal and Replace Obamacare, build a wall, redo the immigration system, reign in corporate finance, rebuild American manufacturing, bring back American jobs, balance the budget...you know, MAGA. They didn't do any of that. They passed a tax cut, did nothing else, and then got stomped in 2018 and accomplished nothing else in Congress.

That was their big "law" achievement but they accomplished some major goals. When the pandemic happened they held a gun to everyone's head to stuff the pockets of the rich *and* keep who got paid a secret. They basically re-made the judiciary - the GOP pipeline end-to-end did that with their counter majoritarian over representation. They just put lists in front of Trump and told them how it'd help him. He nodded. And I could find more example easily. In the end, it was way more than a tax cut. Even when they lost the House they still managed to get most of their dirty work done.

We almost built permanent one-party rule and all I got was COVID-19 and a tax cut.

They were never anywhere close to doing that. The PRI kept a death grip on Mexico for over 70 years. That's a...well, not exactly permanent minority rule but at least minority rule with some staying power. Unified Republican control lasted 2 years. We have a lot of problems in this country, but domination by a single political party isn't one of them. When was the last time we went a decade without a "wave" of one kind or another?

Jeez man, this entire century has been the GOP dominating nearly everything. I was going to type out a long list but this is table stakes for any discussion of our government. If you don't see how weak the Democratic party has been in the 21st century then you have missed the story. Sure they had Obama as a President for 8 years but they have *ONE* signature policy in 20 years. ACA. And the GOP still managed to chip away at it extensively to the point where healthcare coverage looks like 1999 again. That's about it. Obama was forced essentially to act as repairman and caretaker for failed Republican policies and then the GOP did it again. And despite the monstrous and disastrous stuff they did, we came *this* close to them having a decent shot at tearing it all down over the next 4 years. And Trump just laid out a roadmap about how to get it done for a competent strongman.

The TLDR; is that the Democrats won some elections? Who cares. They couldn't get anything fucking done in 20 years while the GOP controls 2/3 of the Supreme Court, they have to moderate themselves *a tiny tad* and they'll win Presidential elections with ease, and they'll probably continue to dominate the Senate for the near future. In other words, we'll largely be dominated by GOP policy for an indeterminate amount of years without structural change. I'm not even going to get into how our foreign policy looks schizophrenic and our allies were in a near panic and now damn sure won't bet on us long-term which is another huge problem looming.

Edit: - source material - most of this focuses near-term because it related to Ginsburg

NY Times - End Minority Rule

WaPo - Supreme Court fight highlights the new political reality: America under minority rule

New Republic - Inside the Republican Plot for Permanent Minority Rule