The Biden and Harris campaign is excoriating Trump as a sleaszy, racist, mean spirited person who has also been derelict in his duty in that the President has neither a plan to deal with the coronavirus pandemic or to deal with the continuing economic crisis. It is more than understandable that there would be a focus on this singular figure. Just about everything that might go bad has gone bad. We should be thankful that there is no major war. The focus groups may also conclude that the demeaning of Trump is likely to earn a few points in Biden learners and with those who are disenchanted with the President. That campaign decision is not to spend much time or attention on the plans Biden will roll out when he might become elected, even though the general wisdom is that elections are about hope and promises for the future rather than failures of the past. We will see. But interviews with Biden and Harris have made clear that there is a clear program of action should Biden become President, and so we are sometimes not emphasizing enough what Biden will do on Day 0ne. I want to cobble together what is said or implied about what his plan is, even if Biden does not want to make his plan front and center.
Kamala Harris has said that, right off, masks and social distancing will be a standard rather than a mandate. That means people will show by example and convince people to wear masks and engage in social distance. The government will not force compliance through fines or by police intervention. That will be especially difficult to do so because resisting masks and distance has been treated as a political point of view. It was easier to get citizens to cooperate with home front efforts in World War II because a spirit of cooperation and patriotism had been there from the beginning. Although not stated specifically, there would also be an attempt to persuade various state agencies to comply with directives having to do with schooling. A state that has a high level of coronavirus percentages when testing would suggest not to open schools. Public health advisors would ask the governors and mayors to shut down schools if there is a spike in the virus.
By January, however, the crucial issue will be to organize the orderly distribution of vaccines. Public health issues have already said that the clear priorities would go to first responders and the elderly. It might be more controversial whether to give high priorities to Blacks and Hispanics because their rates of coronavirus are quite high. Managing the priorities firmly and clearly and fairly will be a first test of confidence for the legitimacy of the new administration.
Presuming that the Senate as well as the President will be Democratic, Chuck Schumer would quickly pass agan in both Houses the original House passage to give $1200 checks to all people, to give money for the hard pressed states, and provide $600 additional unemployment insurance-- unless the Republican Senate decides to agree to most of it so as to gain some votes for the November election.
The Congressional Black Caucus has promoted a very sensible and limited plan to control police excess by, among other things, banning choke holds and eliminating no knock warrants and making police subject to prosecution. That would not solve the problem in that there are a lot of marginal people in inner cities who run into trouble with the police. It would take much longer to create the legislation that would provide jobs and education in inner city areas so as to reduce violence. Then all Blacks might come to matter, including gang and drive by shootings, not just those few who are killed by the police.
Biden could on the first day of his Presidency create an Executive Order on Dreamers who came to the United States as undocumented aliens when they were children. It would take longer to bring together the alliance between Schumer, Pelosi and Marco Rubio to find a path to citizenship for adults who had crossed the border and been worthwhile members of the community for long standing. There never was a need for a wall, though there is a need to carefully check vehicles which enter ports of entry so as to discourage drugs and other contraband. The alleged crisis of the border was not real in that recent years have been fewer in numbers and the mothers and children who crossed the border were avoiding drugs and gangs from Guatemala and Honduras. The hoax will evaporate.
The confrontation between the new President and Vladimir Putin is likely to begin soon after the inauguration but it is likely to be behind the scenes. Susan Rice, odds on to be the new Secretary of State, is likely to say this or the equivalent to his Russian Foreign Minister: the Cold War is over. That means that Russia and the United States are not to engage in borderline hostilities. There are no bounties on American troops now even if American weapons had hit the Russian troops that had been involved in Afghanistan in the Eighties. The two nations are interested in stabilizing their issues. The United States will accept that Syria is controlled by Russia and that Crimia will be Russian and that even the eastern part of Ukraine will create a Russian influence through concluding a peace treaty. But it is clear that some things are off bounds. Biden has overtly said that Russian incursion on the election is a clear act of aggression. There is the need for a carefully negotiated and detailed pact for the control of cyberspace just as the Soviet Union and the United States developed detailed measures for controlling nuclear weapons. Putin might agree because the United States has a considerable cyberspace capability and that it might disrupt Putin’s future election. Putin can have some solace in that he had a free ride with Trump but Trump’s special favor to Putin was not bound to last forever.
Biden can reenter the Paris Climate Accord. This does not mean very much. The various states will engage only in voluntary limits on fossil fuel emissions, but the United States would symbolically show its interest to join with Europeans on what they say they care about. More difficult would be to create a new treaty with nuclear non proliferation with Iran. It would be useful for the United States to get rid of sanctions so as to make Iran prosperous. The United States will not only ask for getting rid of potential nuclear weapons, which is just a paper tiger in that the United States and Israel can destroy their centrifuges whenever they want to. Iran will also have to calm down Hezbollah, which is also a largely spent force, while the United States will accept that Iran will continue to have a continued influence on Iraq, thanks to the bungling that occurred in the George W. Bush Administration.
It will take some months to get together an environment plan that is really a jobs plan, which is the plan Biden has said he is really about. There are loads of good jobs in wind turbines and solar panels, which means jobs for middle and working class jobs rather than only very high tech doctorates. Moreover, revamping health care also means that nurses and other hospital and medical workers could do very well for themselves. A new prosperity could be around the corner, so long as the Democrats will be unleashed while the Republican Senate of the past two years had done as little as possible to improve society with the one exception when the Republicans panicked about the coronavirus and provided very ample funds, albeit with a vigorish for the rich people that was over fifty percent.
On Day One, Biden would be refreshing in his careful consideration of the facts and on policy matters that would be carefully considered before they were announced. Even if Biden is neither eloquent nor stirring, he is like most Presidents in that a Presidential pronouncement is taken as factually reliable and soundly thought about rather than mercurial. It will be a relief not to have to cringe and reinterpret Trump to say something that is clearly outrageous. Biden has to meet a low standard, but he may be steady and clear and a bit boring, which is quite an improvement.
I would take as a policy matter the seeding of a number of potential stars to provide a deep bench so that someone shines in the subsequent recent elections lest some other loose cannon become nominated by the Republicans in the near future. So I would suggest people like Val Demings as Attorney General, Pete Buttigieg as Urban Development, and Beto O’Rourke as something. But let’s not jinx it by buying the wallpaper and the curtains.