Joe Biden is almost certainly the next president, though we will apparently have to go through some tedious political theater before we get there. I wonder if he is pleased with that, or apprehensive. He faces at least two daunting tasks, and will be constrained by what will almost certainly be an obstructionist Republican Senate.
Task 1: Recover the nation from the COVID pandemic. There isn’t really much he can do as president to affect the spread of COVID-19. He can certainly organize some sort to federal effort to get personal protective gear produced and distributed better, and of course if/when a vaccine becomes available the federal government can help with the distribution and funding. And I suppose he can temporarily limit people coming into the country from COVID hot spots. But beyond that really the president can do little.
But where he can have an effect is in dealing with the massive economic impact of the COVID pandemic shutdowns, business closures and bankruptcies, unemployment, and the resultant drop in demand, which may well reach levels not seen since the Great Depression. But this is a difficult balancing act. He can’t throw endless amounts of (borrowed) federal money at the problem because (a) the fiscal conservatives in the Senate won’t let him, and (b) the federal debt is already skyrocketing to dangerous levels (according to some). So as Churchill once said "Now that we have run out of money we have to think.” It will be interesting to see what his administration can come up with in terms of relatively inexpensive (anything under a trillion dollars is “inexpensive” in today’s Washington) regulations and policies and actions to help the situation.
Task 2: Recover the fortunes of the Democratic Party. Though staunch Democrats don’t want to admit it, President Obama was a disaster for the Democratic Party. During his eight years the party lost control of both the House and the Senate, lost 13 governorships and 816 state legislative seats. When he took office Democrats controlled both chambers of 27 state legislature. When he left office they controlled only 13. Things didn’t improve in the 2016 election, the 2018 midterms, or in the current 2020 election.
More worrying, early analysis of voting patterns in this election shows a marked movement of minorities away from Democrats. Not, I suspect, really toward Republicans, but at least away from Democrats, or perhaps simply away from the establishment or the status quo. I’m sure the data from this election will be analyzed endlessly, and people will put all sorts of spin on the results. But people were clearly surprised by the increased share Trump (or at least, the anti-establishment) got of Hispanic, Black, and LGBTQ voters.
Whatever Biden does, he will have to help his party simultaneously keep the votes of the far left and win new votes among the 50% of the country that is (at least nominally) conservative. The far left isn’t going to go off and vote for Republicans, but they might stay home if they are disaffected enough.
He will of course have to do some symbolic things like rejoin the Paris Climate Accords in order to keep his base happy, but if he is smart he will focus most of his effort on these two tasks. And if he can do Task 1 well enough, it will probably help a great deal with Task 2.
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