BIDEN’S FIRST 100 DAYS
EVEN BEFORE JOE BIDEN passed the 270 electoral votes he needed to win the U.S. presidency four days after Election Day, plans were being laid for his administration in Zoom rooms, on conference calls and in occasional in-person, socially distant meetings in Washington, D.C., and Wilmington, Delaware. For the many teams working under Biden-Harris transition chair Ted Kaufman, those tumultuous four days following Election Day, with their shifting results in swing states and an incumbent falsely declaring victory, might as well have occurred in an alternate universe. The teams stayed focused on creating a government-in-waiting, planning how to fill key positions and plotting strategies for the ambitious agenda the former vice president had laid out since winning the Democratic nomination this summer.
What has changed since Election Day—and dramatically so: The much-hyped prospect that Democrats might take control of the U.S. Senate now seems unlikely and Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky will probably remain Majority Leader. As a result, the start of President-elect Biden’s tenure, envisioned as an ambitious flurry of expensive programs and progressive legislation tackling issues like immigration, climate change, health care and criminal justice reform is being downscaled in anticipation of a divided government.
“In a matter of a Tuesday night, we went from expecting an FDR-like First Hundred Days to, basically, unpausing the dynamic of the last six years of Obama Administration where McConnell was an immovable object,” a transition official tells Newsweek on background because they aren’t authorized to speak to the press. “We knew this was possible. It wasn’t even until around September that the polls told us a Democratic Senate was a more serious possibility. But it definitely was more fun preparing to govern with a friendly Congress.”
The challenges facing a nascent Biden administration are further complicated by the devastating—and worsening—pandemic, as new coronavirus infections keep hitting daily records and the total number of cases in the U.S. closes in on the 10 million mark. COVID is “all we talk about now,” the Biden transition official says. “We’re still dreaming big. We just aren’t sure how a lot of this can actually happen.”
