On the menu today: We’re past the 40-day mark of the Biden presidency, and already some things are clear. First, as many of us warned, Biden really isn’t much of a “centrist,” despite what much of the media claimed throughout 2019 and 2020. Second, he and his team are not exactly the wise, experienced, old Washington hands that they like to think of themselves as — remember that passing a COVID-relief bill was supposed to be the easy part of their agenda. Finally, Biden isn’t exactly moving with great speed to fill up the lower ranks of the executive branch.
Six weeks into the Biden administration, the bad news is that Joe Biden and his team are way farther to the left than the candidate promised on the campaign trail in 2020. But this is somewhat offset by the fact that he and his team are much less competent than promised.
Let’s just quickly review impeachment, which ended two weeks ago and already feels as if it’s ancient history. The Biden team didn’t really want the Senate to take the time to deal with a doomed effort, but also didn’t want to take the heat that publicly discouraging the Senate from holding a trial would bring. The trial went forward, it didn’t eat up a ton of the Senate’s time, and in the end, not much changed; Trump got his “acquitted again” headline. Maybe holding the Senate trial exacerbated the infighting in the GOP a bit, but a lot of that infighting was baked in the cake already.
Biden’s impending signature legislative accomplishment — a massive COVID-relief bill — is likely to come to fruition, but in a way that leaves few factions all that satisfied. Ten Senate Republicans came to Biden with a smaller bill that would have gotten significant bipartisan support, but the president and his team turned them down. It’s now doubtful that the bill that ultimately passes will get any Republican support in either chamber. The relief bill will need to be passed through reconciliation, requiring just 50 votes. But raising the minimum wage nationally to $15 per hour can’t be included in a budget bill passed through reconciliation, and the final version is likely to include more compromises. West Virginia senator Joe Manchin is pushing to reduce the $350 million in aid to state and local governments — and as we’ve seen, in a 50–50 Senate, what Manchin wants, Manchin usually gets.
