BIDEN’S CONCILIATORY TONE WORRIES SOME DEMOCRATS
WILMINGTON, Del.
While President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet picks rolled out this week underscore his intention to govern as a conciliator and not a partisan warrior, some on the left worry that his early moves signal weakness even before he steps into the Oval Office.
They say Biden naively believes the Senate still functions as it did during his 36 years there, with potential for compromise and conciliation.
“To meet Republicans where they are is to meet them in Fantasyland,” said Rebecca Katz, a top aide to Nevada Democrat Harry Reid when he served as Senate majority leader. “We don’t have any time to spare. Sometimes you’ve got to fight. We can’t fold before we’ve had one fight.”
On Capitol Hill, other Democrats are sounding similar warnings.
“There is still plenty of room for bipartisanship, but real bipartisanship, from a position of streng th, not begging Republicans to confer bipartisanship upon us if we do things their way,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who is worried that Biden’s outreach to the GOP is being met with resistance.
Biden is making clear through his early moves that he meant it when he said, for months on the campaign trail, that he would turn down the partisan heat in Washington.
His team has quietly reached out to Republicans in the House and Senate and expressed public sympathy
for their delicate political calculation in weighing the potential backlash from President Donald Trump’s base if they acknowledged the election results, according to a person familiar with the strategy who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal thinking and private discussions.
So far, Biden can boast some success with his approach. Along with other olive branches to Republicans, he backed away from filing a lawsuit to force the General Services Administration to release resources for his transition. The GSA instead relented after a pressure campaign that came first from Democrats, and then Republicans, along with back-to-back-to-back losses in state courts for the president’s attempt to overturn the election results.
“I’m making a judgment based on many years of experience and how to get things done with the opposition,” Biden said when asked why he had declined to pursue a legal challenge against Trump’s refusal to cooperate with a transition.
The tension between picking fights and pursuing conciliation so far is typified by questions about Susan Rice, who was a finalist in Biden’s vice presidential search and was mentioned by Biden allies as a possible secretary of state when she didn’t get that post.
Republicans blasted Rice as a polarizing pick but some Democrats urged Biden to be an advocate for an experienced hand in foreign affairs who could be one of the most prominent Black women in his government.
Biden’s choice of the lower-profile Antony Blinken, an establishment figure with close ties to the presidentelect for decades, is widely seen as less likely to kick up a political storm in the closely divided Senate that will vote on his confirmation.
“Susan will land in another key job,” said one Biden insider. The person declined to say whether the position would be one requiring Senate confirmation.
The person also scoffed at the notion that Rice was set to get the job but for Biden’s reluctance to launch a fight with Republican senators.
“Tony was always the choice. Always,” the person said, referring to Blinken. “Anyone who thinks Tony was not going to get this doesn’t know Joe Biden.”
Rice was a leading candidate to serve as secretary of state in President Barack Obama’s second term. The Stanford-educated foreign policy phenom had risen quickly in the diplomatic ranks, becoming one of the country’s youngest assistant secretaries of state.
But she withdrew from consideration amid furor over her initial comments about the 2012 armed attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. Four Americans were killed: former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty from Encinitas and Tyrone Woods from Imperial Beach, U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and information officer Sean Smith, a San Diego native.
Rice relied on what turned out to be inaccurate talking points supplied by the White House and CIA. Eight congressional panels investigated the events; none found that Rice had been deliberately misleading.
Instead, Obama named Rice as his second-term national security adviser, a job that does not require Senate confirmation. She worked closely with Biden as vice president, often hashing out policy ideas with him in the West Wing.
Before the Blinken selection, GOP senators lined up to oppose Rice, even as they refused to fully acknowledge Biden’s victory. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., called her the “Typhoid Mary” of the Obama administration’s foreign policy. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview that “she’s a hard person to confirm.”
Biden’s common-ground approach was part of his pitch to America and how he worked during a Senate career that preceded his two terms as vice president.
“I’ve known him a long time, and I don’t think guns blazing is ever going to be his style,” said Biden’s friend and donor John Morgan. “He is an institutionalist. He’s friendly with both sides.”
Part of Biden’s calculation is the reality he faces in a closely divided Senate — a chamber now in Republican hands. Even if Democrats win both of Georgia’s runoff elections on Jan. 5, the chamber would split 50-50, giving him the smallest possible edge with the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.
That will require maintaining some relationships with Republicans and keeping the Democratic left happy. Already, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the liberal leader who rallied his forces on behalf of Biden during the general election, is worried that Biden’s posture to reach out to the right will leave the left wing of the party untended.
“It would be, for example, enormously insulting if Biden put together a ‘team of rivals’ — and there’s some discussion that that’s what he intends to do — which might include Republicans and conservative Democrats but which ignored the progressive community,” Sanders said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Sanders is hoping that Biden will tap him to be labor secretary, according to a person familiar with his ambitions, although that could reignite GOP campaign talking points that Biden is captive to the left.
Biden avoided a similar fight by skipping over Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as Treasury secretary, a position she sought and instead went to former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, according to several Warren allies.
“You can only pick one or two battles,” said a Biden insider, explaining Biden’s approach to nominations.