PEOPLE – Page 12 – * Failed Pols

The 2020 Election has been bittersweet for Democrats and others who had been hoping for a stronger referendum against Donald Trump and Trumpian politics. Joe Biden’s election as president is certainly a triumph, but as the House lost a few Democratic seats, and the Senate did not win a majority (although it could pick up two seats in Georgia runoff elections in January), our new president’s ability to pass legislation through Congress will likely be hobbled. Nevertheless, when he is president, Joe Biden can still use the power of the federal government to execute a good deal of change, as well as reverse, repair, or prevent some of the environmental, economic, and public health damage resulting from Trump’s policies and/or incompetence.

Donald Trump has governed with the executive order numerous times throughout his tenure, and Biden, as president, can use it, too.

Trump used the executive order to, among other things, overturn various Obama-era actions and policies such as withdrawing from the Paris Climate Treaty, rolling back clean energy plans and the Clean Water Rule, and rescinding the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order, along with many others. Trump also used the executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the World Health Organization, place a ban on most travel from several Muslim-majority countries, and file the Minimizing the Economic Burden of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Pending Repeal (which could overturn the entire Affordable Care Act).

As president, Joe Biden plans to use the power of the executive order almost immediately to reverse numerous Trumpian executive actions. Biden plans to rejoin the World Health Organization, as well as the Paris climate accords. He will reinstate the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program, which will allow “dreamers”— those brought to the U.S. illegally as children— to stay in the U.S., the only country they have known as they’ve grown up. He has also said that on day one as president, he will pass an executive order to establish a task force for reuniting migrant children and parents who were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border during the Trump administration, and he will stop funding for continuing construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall. Additionally, Biden will repeal Trump’s ban on travel from certain Muslim-majority countries.

The most pressing issue President-elect Biden must face is the global coronavirus pandemic. On Monday, he announced that he is already setting up his future administration’s own coronavirus advisory board, which will be co-chaired by former surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy and former Food and Drug Administration commissioner David Kessler.

The advisory board will not wait for Biden’s inauguration to begin meeting, and will convene a few days from now. Biden has also said he plans to “restore U.S. global leadership to fight the pandemic,” signaling his intent to begin repairing relationships with other world leaders. Though he will face a Republican-led Senate, Joe Biden has high hopes of passing a new bill for another coronavirus relief package, and will begin working on it even before he takes office.

In addition to looking to science and public health experts to address the pandemic, Joe Biden has plans to help remedy the economic impact of the coronavirus on Americans. He will have executive control of hundreds of billions of dollars left to be spent from the Cares Act, which was passed in April. Biden plans to us part of those funds to increase testing, as well as to make rapid COVID testing widely available for businesses and public gathering places, which could help curb the health and economic damage from the pandemic.

Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), a longtime Biden ally, summarized Biden’s initial agenda: “Get us out of this pandemic that’s been made far worse by Trump’s bungled mishandling of it, rebuild our economy in a way that’s more sustainable and more inclusive, and deal with division and inequality.”

A Biden Administration could accomplish much of what Senator Coons calls out, even without a Democrat-controlled Senate. In addition to executive orders, Biden’s selection of Cabinet members will be instrumental to facilitating a certain amount of the Biden/Harris agenda. The Senate must confirm Biden’s cabinet appointees, and we can expect the Republican-controlled Senate to put up roadblocks. Consequently, the Biden team is considering appointing “acting” Cabinet members.

“Just by virtue of the calendar and how many positions are filled, that’s always a possibility,” said a Biden associate. “Because the Senate moves so slowly now, so much more slowly than it used to.”

Joe Biden has said that when he is president, he plans to reach out to U.S. allies and “pick up the pieces of Donald Trump’s broken foreign policy.” He will have the advantage of having already established good relationships with leaders around the world as Vice President, as well as during his time in Congress, along with the understanding of and respect for global diplomacy that Donald Trump lacks.

In addition, President-elect Biden has plans for a global Summit for Democracy where leaders of democratic nations would discuss ways to expand human rights, as well as help prevent government corruption and authoritarianism.

There is another reason to be somewhat optimistic about what Joe Biden could get done when he takes office. He is skilled at working across the aisle to get things done, even without a Democratic-controlled Senate. In today’s hyper-partisan atmosphere, many Democrats saw this trait of Biden’s as a liability early in his campaign. Now that he is facing the possibility of a Senate that remains Republican-dominated, it may prove to be a real strength.

If the January Senate runoff elections in Georgia result in Republican wins, it will be disheartening that Joe Biden isn’t likely to achieve all that he envisions, but we still have much to be hopeful and optimistic about. We can rely on the fact that Joe Biden will be a leader who is interested in the well-being of this country and its people; who will not fill his cabinet with self-serving and corporate-serving sycophants; who has already lifted, even if only slightly, the fog of ugliness. There is much that Joe Biden can accomplish as president, beginning with offering hope.

Biden transition team prepares executive orders to reverse key Trump policies | CGTN [2020-11-09]

Biden Focuses On COVID-19 Taskforce, Executive Orders |
Fox 5 San Diego [2020-11-09]

As I write this, the world is still awaiting the results of the 2020 Presidential election. Even before the winner is called, and no matter whether it is Joe Biden (who at this moment looks promising) or Donald Trump, the overall results have been a little disturbing. It is genuinely surprising how much of the country wants Donald Trump to remain their president for four more years.

Many Americans (a lot of us thought it was most Americans) couldn’t wait for the opportunity to elect Joe Biden to replace Donald Trump and stop the national bleeding that has resulted from an administration defined by corruption, lies, divisiveness, recklessness, and gross mismanagement of a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Record voter turnouts were encouraging. Lifelong Republicans in droves were declaring their intention to vote for Joe Biden, and even many prominent Republicans endorsed Biden.

Yet, on Election Night, the news networks’ Magic Walls and prediction maps lit up in red, one state after another, showing Donald Trump as the winner for those states. It’s always true that some states will vote predominantly red, while others vote predominantly blue; that’s democracy in action. During this, The Most Important Election of Our Lifetimes, then, why have so many people voted to keep a man in office who has shown a keen interest in eliminating as much of our democracy as possible?

Polls showed that the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic was a big factor in how Americans planned to vote. According to those polls, most Americans aren’t happy with how Donald Trump has managed the pandemic, and feel Joe Biden would do a better job of it. Though we can’t ignore that fact that millions of votes did reflect this, for an alarming number of other Americans, the over 224,000 deaths, the millions of positive cases, and the president’s reckless super-spreader rallies, weren’t a problem.

When Americans elected Donald Trump in 2016, it might have been understandable that they wanted a change from politics as usual, and saw that in Trump. They’d try him out, and if it didn’t work out, then, in four years, another president could be elected instead. It might have been excusable that some of them were desperate about their jobs or their futures, and saw hope in Donald Trump. Others believed his convenient claim of being “pro-life,” and that’s all that mattered to them. And some, we know, liked Trump’s message of racism and xenophobia disguised as “America First” and “Law and Order,” which made them, at last, feel safe to come out of the shadows and express their own racism and xenophobia. Many were in all three pro-Trump camps.

Desperation and hope are understandable. “But the economy” is perhaps a valid argument until we consider all of the integrity and decency that Trump voters have been willing to disregard and overlook for its sake. What’s more, it’s been four years, and many of those desperate people who voted for Trump are still waiting for “the economy” to work for them.

Donald Trump has shown who he is, and his loyalists have shown who they really are. The “let’s see what happens” approach to Trump as president has expired. We’ve seen what has happened: the division, the open corruption of the adminstration, the rollback of many Obama-era environmental protections, the rise (or at least the increased boldness) of white supremacists and right-wing militia groups, the death and tragedy from an unmanaged pandemic, the open racism and xenophobia, the stamp of approval on misogyny. After four years of all this, an alarming number of Americans have demonstrated that they have no problem with any of it.

Numerous high-ranking former military officers have condemned Trump’s misuse of the military to squelch freedoms and further his own political interests.

Following Trump’s stunt in June, 2020, where he used the military to break up a peaceful demonstration in response to the police killing of George Floyd, then posed in front of church with a Bible for a photo-op, Marine Corps General John Allen, former commander of US forces in Afghanistan under Obama, said, “Donald Trump isn’t religious, has no need of religion, and doesn’t care about the devout, except insofar as they serve his political needs…To even the casual observer, Monday was awful for the United States and its democracy. The president’s speech was calculated to project his abject and arbitrary power, but he failed to project any of the higher emotions or leadership desperately needed in every quarter of this nation during this dire moment.”

National security experts and former intelligence officials have warned that Trump is a threat to our national security in a variety of ways. Some of the ways Trump endangers the nation include his freewheeling granting of security clearance to others who may be national security threats; his cozying up to despotic strongmen such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping; and his replacement of experienced career diplomats in key global locations with inexperienced campaign donors. In addition, it was recently revealed that Trump has excessive financial debt to foreign countries.

David Kris, former head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division and founder of Culper Partners consulting firm, says, “For a person with access to U.S. classified information to be in massive financial debt is a counterintelligence risk because the debt-holder tends to have leverage over the person, and the leverage may be used to encourage actions, such as disclosure of information or influencing policy, that compromise U.S. national security.”

Perhaps most astonishing is the fact that even though Donald Trump has loudly signaled that he’d like to be a despotic ruler more than president of a democratic nation, the small-government, self-proclaimed rugged individualists who are his supporters are willing to enable him as he attains this career goal. They believed his threats of chaos, violence, loss of liberty, and even “socialism,” should he not get four more years in the White House, fearing for their democracy. Yet, they’re just fine with Trump’s claim of “absolute authority” as president, his attempts to silence the media, and his frequent abuses of office.

It’s true that Joe Biden has received more popular votes than any other candidate in American history, yet it’s dismaying how many Americans chose to cast their votes for Donald Trump. Whether it was in spite of who Trump is, or because of who he is, those voters have demonstrated clearly that they don’t have a problem with what Trump stands for, and how he treats other human beings.

If Joe Biden does become president, it will be a start toward ending the division in this country. The division, however, stems from something deeper than mere “political disagreement.” Friends and neighbors can agree to disagree. When it comes to human rights, treatment of others, and the safety of American lives, however, it is no longer a matter of political opinion, it is a matter of character. The 2020 Presidential Election revealed to us the disturbing fact that a large number of Americans align with the character of Donald Trump. Joe Biden, if elected to replace Donald Trump, has his work cut out for him. (P.S.: I believe he’s up to the task.)

How the world is reacting to the U.S. presidential election | CBS News
[2020-11-04]

Trump supporter leaves CNN anchor speechless | CNN [2016-10-10]

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