Incoming Biden-Harris team signals it will avoid repeating many of Obama’s missteps

“If his­to­ry repeats itself, and the unex­pect­ed always hap­pens, how inca­pable must Man be of learn­ing from expe­ri­ence,” the cel­e­brat­ed Irish play­wright and polit­i­cal activist George Bernard Shaw wrote a lit­tle more than a cen­tu­ry ago.

At this incred­i­bly fraught and per­ilous moment in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, we don’t just need steady, com­pas­sion­ate gov­er­nance — we need savvy, capa­ble lead­er­ship with a respect and appre­ci­a­tion for his­to­ry and a will­ing­ness to learn from it.

For­tu­nate­ly, the tran­si­tion work done by our next Pres­i­dent and Vice Pres­i­dent dur­ing the past few weeks sug­gests that they will be enter­ing office mind­ful of the risk of unforced polit­i­cal errors and leg­isla­tive malpractice.

The last time Democ­rats had a tri­fec­ta at the fed­er­al lev­el (con­trol of the White House, U.S. House, and Sen­ate) at the begin­ning of Barack Oba­ma’s pres­i­den­cy in 2009, the coun­try was in the throes of anoth­er cri­sis — the Great Recession.

Though Oba­ma’s team was able to sta­bi­lize the econ­o­my, res­cue the auto indus­try, and low­er unem­ploy­ment, they were not able to facil­i­tate an inclu­sive recov­ery, or posi­tion the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty for a suc­cess­ful midterm elec­tion cycle. We’re still liv­ing with the con­se­quences of their mis­steps over a decade later.

There is much to like and admire about Barack Oba­ma. There were many pro­gres­sive pol­i­cy advances dur­ing his pres­i­den­cy. But any fair appraisal of his tenure has to con­sid­er his mis­takes and fail­ures as well as his successes.

Espe­cial­ly in times of cri­sis, a new admin­is­tra­tion’s ear­ly deci­sions are extreme­ly con­se­quen­tial. That’s why it’s so reas­sur­ing to see Biden and Har­ris mak­ing moves that will keep our coun­try and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty out of some of the traps the Oba­ma team fell into back in 2009. Here’s a few exam­ples of what I mean.

The American Rescue Plan

Joe Biden’s ini­tial sig­na­ture leg­isla­tive pro­pos­al is called the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan. It’s a near­ly $2 tril­lion eco­nom­ic relief pack­age that would pro­vide direct finan­cial assis­tance to mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, raise the min­i­mum wage, fund nation­wide vac­ci­na­tion pro­grams, and help strug­gling small businesses.

The pro­pos­al is more than twice as big as Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s ini­tial sig­na­ture leg­isla­tive pro­pos­al in 2009 — the Amer­i­can Recov­ery and Rein­vest­ment Act (ARRA), which was only about $831 bil­lion in size.

ARRA was good leg­is­la­tion, but it was­n’t near­ly as big as it should have been, which lim­it­ed its poten­cy and effec­tive­ness. A cri­sis is a ter­ri­ble thing to waste, and it would make absolute­ly no sense for Biden-Har­ris to pro­pose a small or medi­um scale relief pack­age at the out­set of their admin­is­tra­tion. They need to go big — as big as they pos­si­bly can. In fact, we’d love to see the scope of this pro­pos­al increased even fur­ther, with more aid for state and local governments.

The greater the invest­ment, the more fis­cal­ly respon­si­ble the pack­age will be, even if the invest­ments are not paid for with new tax rev­enue. When your house is burn­ing down, you don’t wor­ry about the cost of putting out the fire — you focus on putting out the fire. That’s exact­ly what we need to be doing right now. Kudos to Biden and Har­ris for propos­ing a plan that is much big­ger in scope than ARRA was. Con­gress should expand it even fur­ther, not water it down.

The Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan is also a great name for the pack­age. It’s mem­o­rable and easy to say, and it prop­er­ly invokes pro­gres­sive framing.

George Lakoff would be proud.

The Democratic National Committee

The best known arm of the nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee, or DNC, which does­n’t have the breadth of pow­er its most tren­chant crit­ics seem to think it does, but is nev­er­the­less important.

The DNC has an unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic, unwrit­ten tra­di­tion of let­ting incum­bent Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dents (or, more accu­rate­ly, their polit­i­cal advis­ers) decide who should serve as DNC Chair when the par­ty holds the White House, and then sim­ply installing that per­son with­out com­pet­i­tive elections.

Oba­ma’s team used that pow­er bad­ly. They weak­ened the DNC in two huge ways.

First, rather than invest­ing in the par­ty, they set up a com­pet­ing, inef­fec­tive polit­i­cal appa­ra­tus called Orga­niz­ing For Amer­i­ca, or OFA, which was sup­posed to be the suc­ces­sor to the ground­break­ing Oba­ma cam­paign that lift­ed Oba­ma to vic­to­ry in 2008. After Oba­ma’s suc­cess­ful reelec­tion in 2012, OFA began to with­er on the vine along with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. It nev­er became a polit­i­cal force.

Sec­ond, they repeat­ed­ly installed as DNC Chair elect­ed offi­cials who could not give the par­ty and the job their undi­vid­ed atten­tion and loyalty.

Their first pick was then-Gov­er­nor Tim Kaine of Vir­ginia, who had sen­a­to­r­i­al ambi­tions and ulti­mate­ly stepped down from his posi­tion to pur­sue those ambi­tions. Their sec­ond pick was Deb­bie Wasser­man Schultz, who arguably turned out to be the most dis­as­trous DNC Chair the par­ty had ever seen. (After Wasser­man Schultz was picked, I wrote a post here express­ing my con­cerns about her selec­tion, which end­ed up being entire­ly justified.)

Rather than pick­ing a gov­er­nor or mem­ber of Con­gress to head the DNC, Biden’s team has nom­i­nat­ed Jaime Har­ri­son, who is avail­able for par­ty­build­ing fol­low­ing his loss in the South Car­oli­na U.S. Sen­ate race to Trump apol­o­gist Lind­sey Gra­ham, who once denounced Trump and now can­not quit him.

Since Har­ri­son isn’t an elect­ed offi­cial, he will be able to focus full time on build­ing a strong DNC. His selec­tion has been hailed by state par­ty chairs all over the coun­try, who are thrilled at the prospect of a strong part­ner at the DNC.

With Har­ri­son as chair, the par­ty will be bet­ter posi­tioned to avoid a repeat of the hor­rif­ic 2010 midterms, when Repub­li­cans wiped out the Demo­c­ra­t­ic U.S. House major­i­ty and took over gov­er­nor­ships and state­hous­es across the country.

Biden’s team is also plan­ning to invest in the par­ty at all lev­els as opposed to attempt­ing to build a sep­a­rate polit­i­cal oper­a­tion, which is real­ly, real­ly smart.

Personnel is policy: Promising nominees for key positions

Twelve years ago, Barack Oba­ma dis­ap­point­ed many of his strongest sup­port­ers when he named wrong­head­ed neolib­er­als like Rahm Emanuel, Lar­ry Sum­mers, and Tim Gei­th­n­er to key posi­tions with­in his administration.

Biden (and Har­ris) appear to have tak­en note. They’ve assem­bled a more promis­ing eco­nom­ic and reg­u­la­to­ry team for their administration.

Here are some of their key nominees:

• Janet Yellen, Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury. The for­mer Fed Chair has a good rep­u­ta­tion among pro­gres­sive law­mak­ers and is also wide­ly respect­ed across the polit­i­cal spec­trum. Yellen is extreme­ly smart and very savvy, and under­stands the need to build a more inclu­sive economy.
• Gary Gensler, SEC Chair. The hard-charg­ing Gensler believes in going tough on Wall Street, which is great news for the coun­try. Dur­ing the Oba­ma years, Gensler was a leader in push­ing for tough rules on deriv­a­tives. Now, he’ll be in a prime posi­tion to crack down on cor­po­rate abus­es that went unad­dressed dur­ing the Trump error.
• Rohit Chopra, CFPB Direc­tor. Chopra is Biden’s choice to head the Con­sumer Finan­cial Pro­tec­tion Bureau, the fed­er­al agency cre­at­ed by Eliz­a­beth War­ren to safe­guard Amer­i­cans and their wal­lets against greedy big banks and oth­er unscrupu­lous finan­cial insti­tu­tions. Chopra helped War­ren set up the agency and can be trust­ed to restore its strength.
• Cecil­ia Rouse, Chair of the Coun­cil of Eco­nom­ic Advis­ers. Rouse, the dean of the Prince­ton School of Pub­lic and Inter­na­tion­al Affairs, is a well regard­ed labor econ­o­mist. She pre­vi­ous­ly served in Oba­ma’s Coun­cil of Eco­nom­ic Advis­ers and is respect­ed by pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions that work on eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty issues. She is expect­ed to have an equi­ty focus.

The Cab­i­net and exec­u­tive team Biden and Har­ris have built are def­i­nite­ly not as pro­gres­sive as the team that Bernie Sanders or Eliz­a­beth War­ren would have built, but this team does lean more to the left than Oba­ma’s, and that’s progress.

The administration’s next moves are just as crucial

Biden and Har­ris will end their tran­si­tion in a strong posi­tion. They’ve cho­sen a record num­ber of nom­i­nees for key posts and will have a more coop­er­a­tive Unit­ed States Sen­ate thanks to the momen­tum-build­ing vic­to­ries in the Geor­gia runoffs only two weeks ago, which end­ed Mitch McConnel­l’s Repub­li­can majority.

How­ev­er, the road ahead is per­ilous. Biden and Har­ris are inher­it­ing a hor­rif­ic pub­lic health emer­gency, a debil­i­tat­ing eco­nom­ic cri­sis, and a dis­in­for­ma­tion-plagued soci­ety from Don­ald Trump and Mike Pence. If that weren’t bad enough, Amer­i­ca’s rela­tion­ships with its allies have been bad­ly dam­aged, and the coun­try’s adver­saries embold­ened. In about every respect, the coun­try is in a weak­er and more frag­ile state than it was four years ago when Barack Oba­ma left office.

Arguably, the biggest mis­take that Barack Oba­ma made in 2009–2010 is one I haven’t men­tioned yet: allow­ing the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and Wall Street to escape account­abil­i­ty for their wrong­do­ing. Oba­ma incor­rect­ly con­clud­ed that the coun­try would be best served by mov­ing on instead of pros­e­cut­ing those respon­si­ble for hor­rif­ic human rights vio­la­tions and eco­nom­ic injustices.

It was­n’t, of course.

Biden and Har­ris must not make that mistake.

Account­abil­i­ty is a pre­req­ui­site for heal­ing. It is a neces­si­ty. Incom­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al Mer­rick Gar­land must launch a broad, wide rang­ing crim­i­nal probe into the wrong­do­ing com­mit­ted by Don­ald Trump, his fam­i­ly, and his associates.

The peo­ple involved in the loot­ing and plun­der­ing of this coun­try dur­ing the last four years must be brought to jus­tice. That includes Trump’s Repub­li­can enablers in Con­gress, like Andy Big­gs, Mo Brooks, Josh Haw­ley and Ted Cruz.

His­to­ry tells us that appease­ment does­n’t work against neo­fas­cists and bul­lies. They must be con­front­ed. They must be fought. We have no objec­tion to Joe Biden’s calls for uni­ty and heal­ing, but we can only have uni­ty and heal­ing if we deal with the grave threat to our democ­ra­cy and our future that’s in front of us.

Can Joe Biden and Kamala Har­ris rise to the chal­lenge? We have faith they can. We’ll be doing our part to encour­age them to gov­ern pro­gres­sive­ly and wisely.