The end is nigh! Great but for the grim reaper

We are approaching the end of a truly dreadful year: corona virus, recession, rising right-wing extremism. The 100 million doses of vaccine Donald Trump promised by the end of the year are 97% nowhere to be seen. One percent of the country is dead from a virus he tried to ignore and promised would just go away. The economy is barely half recovered from the dip in employment the epidemic caused and appears to be on the verge of dipping back down again. Q-Anon, Proud Boys, and other conspiracy/hate groups are growing in both numbers and boldness.

The President himself is in a hissy fit over his loss in the election, which he denies and falsely attributes to fraud. He vetoed the annual defense authorization, including its pay for deployed troops, hesitated to approve a new corona virus relief package his Administration negotiated (and waited so late to sign that its unemployment benefits will be delayed), avoided blaming and shaming the Russians for a massive cyberhack targeted against American government institutions and companies, and is encouraging Republicans to object to approval of the Electoral College outcome in favor of President-elect Biden when the new Congress meets January 6.

All of this is unprecedented, as is the Trump Administration non-cooperation with the Biden team on national security, changes to environmental and other regulations, 11th-hour appointments of incompetent Trump loyalists to numerous government boards, advisory bodies, and independent agencies, and the undocumented pardons for Trump’s friends, associates, and war criminals (literally). Even Attorney General Barr, who had done Trump’s bidding at every turn, couldn’t take it any more and left under pressure because he wouldn’t declare the election fraudulent.

What is happening is not really chaotic. It is intentional and purposeful. Trump is trying to make it difficult if not impossible for Biden to reverse the extremist course of the past four years, during which many cabinet members tried to wreck the missions of their own agencies. In a matter of just a few months, he is encouraging his minions to do what otherwise might have taken the next four years. Trump wants the US government, which he loathes, to be incapable of recovery from his presidency.

With more time he might have been successful, but Biden’s victory saved the day. It will take years of diligence to rebuild the State and Defense Departments as well as the intelligence community and the government’s international broadcasting capabilities. A lot of damage has been done to Health and Human Services as well as Education, but they too can likely be restored once the Trumpians are rousted out. I suspect the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department are in shambles. Homeland Security was a mess even before Trump–Biden’s appointee there will have her or his work cut out correcting the arrogant behavior of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

We discovered during these past four years how dependent our governance is on unwritten norms that Trump violated with impunity. Biden will have to consider carefully whether prosecutions of Trump and his people are warranted. Biden will also need to weigh carefully which norms should now be written into regulations and laws rather than remaining unwritten. America is a young country compared to many on this earth, but it has an old governing systems that creaks when pressure is put on it. If nothing else, we are going to have to do something to make it impossible for someone to win the presidency while losing the popular vote by millions. And far too many states still have provisions that would allow state legislatures to override the polls.

For Biden, a lot will depend on who wins the two Georgia Senate seats January 5. That election is unusual in several respects: usually the election of senators is staggered so that two don’t come up in the same year, most states do not do runoff elections when the leading candidate fails to get 50% of the vote, and Georgia had been reliably Republican in presidential elections for almost three decades before November 3. But there appears to be some possibility the Democrats could win both seats, which would give them control of all three Houses in Washington.

With that, Biden could hope to make quick progress on a legislative agenda as well as appoint more moderate judges. Without it, he will face implacable opposition from Senate Majority Leader McConnell, who fancies himself the grim reaper:

McConnell is allowing the Senate Republicans to join in overriding Trump’s veto of the defense authorization, but he is unlikely to allow Republicans to join with Democrats in meeting the President’s demand to increase per capita epidemic payments.* So the grim reaper will oppose Trump on both issues, but don’t let that fool you. He will be an implacable foe of Joe Biden.

PS: What he did was to wrap all the President’s demands together and make approval of the $2000 dependent on other things that he could be sure the Democrats wouldn’t go along with. Stalemate.