Inside Biden’s struggle to manage factions among Democrats
President-elect Joe Biden is confronting factionalism and fierce impatience within his own party, as the groups that make up the Democratic coalition see President Donald Trump crumbling as an adversary and turn toward the battle to define the personnel and policies of a new administration.
With just five weeks left before he takes office, Biden and his allies and advisers acknowledge it may be a considerable challenge to convert the array of constituencies he rallied against Trump into a sturdier governing force. Already, the competition for senior offices has strained valuable political alliances, vexing some of Biden’s key supporters from the Democratic primary contest, as well as numerous minority and female lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Biden has so far sought not to muffle Democratic dissension or impose a tightly focused message on the party, but rather to roll out a team focused on addressing the coronavirus crisis while placating various interest groups. It is a strategy that largely replicates the Biden campaign’s successful approach to the 2020 election: treating the pandemic as the overwhelming issue, taking modest steps to appease different Democratic factions and surrounding Biden with familiar faces that embody governing expertise.
On policy as well as nominations, advocacy groups have been mobilizing to demand swift executive action on matters from student debt and police overhauls to union rights and climate change.
Biden will soon unveil another Cabinet nomination: He intends to name former Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan to serve as Energy secretary, people familiar with his plans said Tuesday. Tuesday, Biden named Pete Buttigieg, the former presidential candidate and mayor of South Bend, Ind., as his Transportation secretary. If confirmed, Buttigieg would be the first openly gay person to serve in a presidential Cabinet, and at age 38 he would represent youth in a Cabinet that has so far skewed closer to Biden’s generation.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-cortez of New York, a prominent progressive, said she hoped that Biden would soon lay out the overarching themes of his administration, going beyond the week-by-week staff announce
ments.
“You have an individual appointment here, an individual appointment there,” Ocasio-cortez said. “What is the overall message from the big picture in this entire Cabinet put together?”
Marc Morial, the head of the National Urban League, who was among a group of civil rights leaders who met with Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris last week, said the new administration faced a high bar for its early appointments and policy initiatives.
“There’s got to be a clear understanding that this is not 2008, this is not 1992, this is not 1976,” Morial said, alluding to other newly elected Democratic administrations. “Why is it not? Because we are coming behind the most corrosive, racist president and administration we’ve witnessed in modern times.”
Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden transition effort, said the president-elect had put forward a slate of appointees “who have what it takes to overcome this moment of unprecedented crisis, deliver for American families, and bring our nation together,” and noted that many of them had received broad support.
But sensitivities abound. Some Democratic congressional leaders, including Rep. Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader, are urging Biden not to pluck any more members from their House majority, which is already so fragile that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is likely to face an uncomfortably close vote next month to secure her job for another two years.
“Two is too many, but three would be even more many,” said Hoyer, alluding to the pair of House Democrats whom Biden has already tapped for administration jobs.
But that could exacerbate tensions with a handful of female lawmakers, including Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico, who is hoping to be named interior secretary and whose allies in Congress have expressed their frustration to senior Biden aides that she might be snubbed.
Some lawmakers are also complaining that they have not been adequately consulted by Biden and his team on appointments, especially the selection of Lloyd Austin, a retired general, for defense secretary, given that his recent military service will require Congress to grant him a special waiver.
Identity-based groups continue to lobby Biden to ensure racial and gender diversity at all levels of his administration. Last week, Hispanic lawmakers directly pressed Harris to ensure there would be at least two Latinas in prominent administration roles — a commitment she declined to make, according to people briefed on the meeting.
“She didn’t commit,” said Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, “but she did commit to work with us regularly.”
That commitment was not enough, however: On Monday, a group of Latina Democrats in Congress called for Biden to nominate at least two Latinas to his Cabinet. Also Monday, a constellation of Hispanic advocacy groups had a Zoom meeting with an incoming White House aide, Cedric Richmond, and pressed him to make Biden available for a meeting similar to the one with civil rights leaders last week.
Civil rights groups are prodding Biden to name a Black attorney general, and to shun appointees with weak records on policing and criminal justice. Labor unions have helped block at least one Cabinet appointment, a bid by Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island to become health secretary, because of her record on pension changes.
And there is an ongoing tug of war over several influential environmental posts, though Biden has already chosen Gina Mccarthy, the former EPA director in the Obama administration, for a role coordinating domestic climate policy, people familiar with the decision said.
There is mounting angst among some of Biden’s allies that people who fought hard for him during the campaign have found themselves waiting in line for jobs — or have been offered obviously inferior positions — while Obama-era holdovers were quickly slotted into senior roles.
The tight-knit community of Black mayors has been upset by the absence of Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta, an early Biden supporter, from the upper ranks of the administration. Over the weekend, Bottoms and transition officials denied a report that she had been offered a foreign ambassadorship in lieu of a more prominent role, and a spokesman for the mayor said she had declined a senior appointment without specifying the post.
Rashad Taylor, an adviser to Bottoms, said Monday that an ambassadorship had never been discussed.
But allies of Bottoms, who campaigned hard for Biden through the toughest days of the Democratic primary, remain frustrated that she did not receive one of the coveted jobs she was interested in, such as envoy to the United Nations.
Some in the party believe Biden is still owed considerable deference as he assembles his administration, particularly given the scale of the coronavirus emergency he will confront.
“I always tell everybody: Joe Biden is at the top now and this is what he wants,” said Rep. Doris Matsui of California, adding with a chuckle, “I don’t think we’re going to have as much fighting as having different opinions.”
Biden’s selections of Neera Tanden for the Office of Management and Budget and Xavier Becerra to lead the Department of Health and Human Services have angered Republicans, who view them as overly partisan, and Becerra has faced criticism for lacking formidable public-health credentials.
Some prominent Democrats are increasingly skeptical that Tanden can be confirmed and believe she may eventually land in a White House post that does not require Senate confirmation. Transition officials, however, have insisted in public and private that they will fight for her.
Biden’s aides have privately been working to salve wounds by telling them there will be turnover in the top jobs soon enough.
“I keep saying: The second wave will be earlier than you think,” said one senior Biden official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about private conversations with Cabinet hopefuls. “Go deal with your city, your state for now.”
Meantime, Democrats say, Biden may continue to receive help from a familiar source in his bid for party unity.
“Trump continuing to float that he’s a candidate in the future may be a blessing for Joe Biden,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, a California progressive. “It may be what Joe Biden needs to keep the Democratic coalition together.”