How Many Republicans Will Biden Put In His Cabinet And Give Other Top Jobs To?

 

John Kasich, who failed to flip-- or even almost flip-- Ohio for Biden said a couple of things over the weekend that angered Democrats for the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party: "Now is the time for Democrats... to begin to listen to what the other half of the country has to say" and "The Democrats have to make it clear to the far-left that they almost cost him this election." Far left? Who dat?

Who would you rather see in Biden's cabinet, Kasich or Rahm Emanuel? I asked Twitter:

Presumably the "far left" are Democrats pushing Medicare-for-All and the Green New Deal. They were all reelected. You know who wasn't? Conservative Democrats (Blue Dogs and New Dems) ideologically in synch with Kasich (and Biden) from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. The Democraps who failed to generate enough enthusiasm among Democrats and independents to be re-elected:

• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA)
• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)
• Gil Cisneros (New Dem-CA)
• Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY)
• Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (New Dem-FL)
• Donna Shalala (relic-FL)
• Abby Finkenauer (secret New Dem-IA)
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)

Writing for Salon yesterday, Norman Solomon noted that progressives made Trump's defeat possible and now it's time to challenge Biden. "The realpolitik rationales for the left to make nice with the incoming Democratic president are bogus," he wrote. "All too many progressives gave the benefit of doubts to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, making it easier for them to service corporate America while leaving working-class Americans in the lurch. Two years later, in 1994 and 2010, Republicans came roaring back and took control of Congress. From the outset, progressive organizations and individuals (whether they consider themselves to be 'activists' or not) should confront Biden and other elected Democrats about profound matters. Officeholders are supposed to work for the public interest. And if they're serving Wall Street instead of Main Street, we should show that we're ready, willing and able to 'primary' them. Progressives would be wise to quickly follow up on Biden's victory with a combative approach toward corporate Democrats. Powerful party leaders have already signaled their intentions to aggressively marginalize progressives." He sees class war within the Democratic Party at play:

Pelosi & Co. try to stamp out the genuinely progressive upsurge in congressional ranks that is fueled from the grassroots, they're "dancing with those who brung them"-- corporate elites. It's an extremely lucrative approach for those who feed out of the troughs of the Democratic National Committee, the Senate and House party campaign committees, the House Majority PAC and many other fat-cat political campaign entities. Consultant contracts and lobbying deals keep flowing, even after Democrats lose quite winnable elections.

Biden almost lost this election. And while the Biden campaign poured in vast financial resources and vague flowery messaging that pandered to white suburban voters, relatively little was focused on those who most made it possible to overcome Trump's election-night lead-- people of color and the young. Constrained by his decades-long political mentality and record, Biden did not energize working-class voters as he lip-synched populist tunes in unconvincing performances.

That's the kind of neoliberal approach that Bernie Sanders and so many of his supporters warned about in 2016 and again this year. Both times there was a huge failure of the Democratic nominee to make a convincing case as an advocate for working people against the forces of wealthy avarice and corporate greed.

...It's clear from polling that Biden gained a large proportion of his votes due to animosity toward his opponent rather than enthusiasm for Biden himself. He hasn't inspired the Democratic base, and his appeal had much more to do with opposing the evils of Trumpism than embracing his own political approach.

More than ever, merely being anti-Trump or anti-Republican isn't going to move Democrats and the country in the vital directions we need. Without a strong progressive program as a rudder, the Biden presidency will be awash in much the same old rhetorical froth and status-quo positions that have so often caused Democratic incumbents to founder, bringing on GOP electoral triumphs.

...Looking ahead, we need vigorous successors to the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society programs of the mid-1960s, which that were asphyxiated, both in political and budgetary terms, by the Vietnam War. Set aside the phrase if you want to, but we need some type of "democratic socialism" (as Martin Luther King Jr. asserted in the last years of his life).

The ravages of market-based "solutions" are all around us; the public sector has been decimated, and it needs to be revitalized with massive federal spending that goes way beyond occasional "stimulus" packages. The potential exists to create millions of good jobs while seriously addressing the climate catastrophe. If we're going to get real about ending systemic and massive income inequality, we're going to have to fight for-- and achieve-- massive long-term public investment, financed by genuinely progressive taxation and major cuts in the military budget.

With enormous grassroots outreach that only they could credibly accomplish, progressive activists were a crucial part of the united front to defeat Trump. Now it's time to get on with grassroots organizing to challenge corporate Democrats.

Most of the comments I've seen from the religious left are all about everybody getting along now. And the evangelicals in the Midwest who abandoned Trump (down around 5 points from 2016) helped Biden win and should be heard out too. But one of my favorite evangelical pastors, John Pavlovitz, wants to make it clear that we don't owe hateful people unity. He wrote yesterday how he is being asked to show unity with Trumpists-- "to extend some instant olive branch of understanding that magically bridges that cavernous gap between us-- ones he revealed and is still actively cultivating." He wrote that he isn’t willing to offer that unconditionally and without caveat. 

It isn’t as though I haven’t been working tireless to understand and to reach these people; to appeal to their sense of decency, to illuminate the damage they are doing to oppressed and marginalized people and invite them into something more redemptive. They have chosen him again and so, I know quite a bit about them-- which is why I am so aware that we do not have any meaningful points of affinity.

I am deeply invested in the work of building disparate community, in navigating differences, in seeing the inherent commonalities of our shared humanity. I have made that my life’s work for three decades as a pastor and activist-- but there are limits to what this means.

Yes, I am burdened to bring diverse people together.

Yes, I am called by my faith to care for all human beings in my path.

And yes, I am compelled to really see people individually and to value their specific stories.

But I am not obligated to have unity with hateful people.

am not morally bound to make peace with a heart that dehumanizes other human beings because of the color of their skin, their nation of origin, their gender, their orientation. And to have embraced Donald Trump now, is to unapologetically brandish such a polluted heart; to be actively perpetuating inequity and stoking division and manufacturing discrimination in this very moment.

I steadfastly refuse such an alliance. I am a loud, conscientious objector in their war against the world.

It would be a slap in the face to migrant children, to people of color, to LGBTQ human beings, to Muslims, to disabled people, to non-Christians, and to women-- for me to suddenly allow the willing and joyous perpetrators of their wounds, proximity to me in the name of some ceremonial unity.

Racists and bigots see other human beings as less than human for an unchangeable part of who they are, and I will not descend into that. I can fully see their humanity and still call them out for thinking and speaking and acting inhumanely-- and I can show them decency and simultaneously declare myself distinct from the malevolence they affirm and want to live with distance from them.

People of faith, morality, and conscience are not required to make peace with hatred.

They are not indebted to racism and bigotry and phobic violence.

The call to love our enemies does not necessitate abiding their enmity.

  The only thing you owe violent people is to see and respect their humanity in ways they refuse for others.

But you are not required to see their hatred as acceptable.

You don’t owe hateful people unity-- ever.