If Democrats do not win their run-off races in Georgia next month, they face the unhappy prospect of at least two years dealing with the stubbornly nihilistic Mitch McConnell. They’re obviously hoping to avoid that scenario, but should it come to pass, Joe Biden is holding out hope: Though McConnell has been as prolific and unyielding an obstructionist as there’s ever been in American politics, the incoming president believes that if there’s anyone who can get him to cooperate, it’s himself. “Let me put it this way,” Biden told the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman Tuesday. “There are a number of things that when McConnell controlled the Senate that people said couldn’t get done, and I was able to get them done with [him].”
“He knows me. I know him,” Biden continued. “I don’t ask him to embarrass himself to make a deal.”
That’s kind of starry-eyed considering McConnell still refuses to acknowledge him as the president-elect. “The future will take care of itself,” McConnell replied to a question Tuesday about Trump’s transparently false claims of a rigged election. “The electoral college is going to meet December 14. There will be an inauguration January 20.” If he still won’t even recognize Biden’s victory a month after the election, what reason is there to believe that a Senate he controls would play nice? For the optimistic Biden, it’s the cost of Republicans doing nothing. “When you have cops and firefighters and first responders across the board being laid off, when you’re not getting the kind of distribution of vaccines out to rural America, it has to have some consequences,” Biden said. “I’m not sure [they] can sustain the position that we’re not going to do anything to help the circumstances of keeping businesses open, making sure we could reopen our schools safely. It is kind of hard to go home [if you are a Republican senator who] let the states go bankrupt.”
Biden may be right that he has more leverage than Republicans think, but Republicans have already seemed pretty unmoved by the current gridlock. For months now, Senate Republicans have been stonewalling Democrats who have sought to expand coronavirus aid, making a new stimulus package unlikely by the end of the year. If he’s willing to hold up a needed relief bill—in an election year, no less—it stands to reason that he’d do the same with Biden’s administration, judicial picks, and more. If Republicans control the Senate, “Mitch McConnell will have enormous powers of obstruction,” the Times’ Paul Krugman wrote this week. “Anyone who doubts he’ll use those powers to undermine Biden at every turn is living in a fantasy world.”
The incoming administration would not be totally helpless. The transition team is already preparing to get agencies up and running—even if a Republican-controlled Senate slow-walks Biden’s Cabinet nominees—by planning to appoint lower-level staff that don’t require confirmation. “They have people identified all the way down to the [deputy assistant secretary] level,” a former U.S. official involved in the transition told Politico. And, on the policy front, Biden will be able to do plenty without McConnell, via executive action. As CNN noted Tuesday, the first days of his presidency are almost certainly going to feature a great deal of unilateral action—many of them aimed at reversing Donald Trump policies.
But if McConnell does retain control of the Senate, he’ll still have the power to thwart much of Biden’s agenda, much in the way he did to Barack Obama’s at the tail-end of his presidency. Biden can call for unity and Democrats can make the case to the American people against McConnell’s obstructionism, but in the end, though, there’s the best way to ensure the Republicans don’t kneecap Biden: win in Georgia.
— Ivanka and Jared’s Post–White House Future Is an Island Alone
— Inside Don Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle’s Supposed RNC-Takeover Plot
— Why Mike Pompeo’s Postelection Trump Worship Carries Real Risks
— Ivanka Trump Was My Best Friend. Now She’s MAGA Royalty
— As Trump Clings to Power, His Allies Quietly Admit Defeat
— Elon Musk’s Totally Awful, Completely Bonkers, Most Excellent Year
— After Biden’s Victory, Can the Media Tune Out Trump’s 2020 Delusions?
— From the Archive: Donald Trump Was the Best Cable-News President in History
— Not a subscriber? Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.
