Joe Biden has begun preparing for the transition in case he’s elected president in the fall, but his promise to champion a liberal agenda from the White House may be hindered if he faces a recalcitrant Senate.
The presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee started putting together a transition team last month, ahead of a May 3 federally mandated deadline. Yet, while the two-term vice president can pick and choose his dream administration lineup, the political realities wrought by the coronavirus pandemic and the makeup of the Senate post-November will decide whether his policy ideas will amount to more than campaign rhetoric.
Early predictions suggest House Democrats will maintain control of their chamber, while the balance of power in the Senate remains a toss-up. Republicans currently hold 53 seats to Democrats’ 45, plus two independents.
For George Mason University’s Jeremy Mayer, Senate Democrats have a “small advantage” heading into the fall fight, which he didn’t foresee changing unless “Americans become convinced that the virus was more hype than reality and that the Democrats were ‘crybabies’ and ‘fraidy-cats,’ to use the technical terms.”
“With 81,000 dead and rising, I think that’s unlikely. I suppose if October comes, and we are mostly back at work, and Florida never suffered for its reopening, the rest of the nation will reconsider? Maybe? Upon such gossamer threads hang the hopes of Senate Republicans,” he told the Washington Examiner.
With the possibility of a divided Congress, Democratic White House hopefuls were pressed during the primary on whether they would support getting rid of the filibuster. Doing so would allow certain bills and confirmations to pass the Senate with a simple majority rather than a 60-vote threshold.
Biden, a 36-year Delaware senator before becoming President Barack Obama’s vice president, was adamantly against the reform at the time.
“There are a number of areas where you can reach consensus that relate to things like cancer and healthcare and a whole range of things. I think we can reach consensus on that and get it passed without changing the filibuster rule,” he told the New York Times in January.
His statements, however, contradict with comments he made in 2013 endorsing then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s triggering of the “nuclear option” to stop the filibustering of judicial nominees to benches other than the Supreme Court. Senate Republicans repeated stymieing of Obama administration judges prompted the move to eliminate the need for a supermajority. The GOP removed the Supreme Court exception in 2017 for Justice Neil Gorsuch’s appointment.
As Biden continues to reach out to more liberal Democrats in an effort to rally the party ahead of the general election, the filibuster issue may return to the negotiating table. Groups such as Stand Up America, for example, were pushing for it in March when the race had whittled down to Biden and Bernie Sanders, despite the Vermont senator’s electoral chances being slim to none.
Though he’s dug his heels in regarding far-Left proposals, including “Medicare for all,” nixing the filibuster could help Biden ram through his own more centrist platform if Democrats don’t win 60 seats this cycle. This is especially true given the trend toward partisan brinkmanship in the Senate, once described as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” Some of those bills could grant statehood to the District of Columbia (and even Puerto Rico) or expand the Supreme Court.
Mayer believed the filibuster would likely be chucked onto “the ash heap of history, and should be” since it was no longer “a rarely used vehicle to express extreme opposition.”
“Now it is a weekly, or even daily, aspect of Senate procedure. Nothing can happen, almost, without threat of filibuster,” he said. “So yes, I think if Dems have a 51-vote majority, they will end the filibuster. And if the GOP holds the Senate, but loses two seats, they could do the same. Trump has been against the filibuster for years.”
Republican strategist Brad Todd was less certain and questioned Biden’s track record of compromise.
“Biden was a partisan before partisanship was cool. He rarely crossed party lines when it counted,” Todd told the Washington Examiner. “He better worry about tending to the eggs now instead of counting the chickens. Long way to go.”
