Policy Is Always About the Next Election

It’s hard for me to think of a point in American history where an incoming President has faced a greater range of compounding crises with as little freedom of action as Joe Biden will have on January 20th of next year. There is COVID. There is economic calamity COVID created. There is the seemingly more distant but gravely important wrecked international system which portends a rising tide of foreign policy crises and disruptions in trade which has the potential to ramify out for decades into the future.

It is still just possible that Democrats will control the Senate, if they pick up both Senate seats in Georgia. But assuming Republicans hold on, basically no legislation of any significance will be possible and Mitch McConnell will have a stranglehold over staffing and presidential confirmations, not even to mention judges.