'Extraordinary Times Demand Extraordinary Actions' - Here Is What Biden and Democrats Can Do to Counter Trump Before Jan. 20
From pardoning Trump’s enemies to holding pre-confirmation hearings on his dangerous Cabinet picks, Biden and Senate Dems must move fast to protect democracy from the dictator-in-waiting.
We can’t say it is coming as a surprise. Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump told Americans just what he would do as president the second time around, and that it would be much rougher, more radical, more over-reaching, and more vicious than his first time. To those who thought he had been chastened, or learned something, or was just talking shit the way he always does, to the reporters and editors who sanewashed him by treating him as a “normal” presidential candidate, the two weeks since he won the election have already proven how dangerously wrong they were.
What now? The fact that Republicans have added the Senate to their continued, if tiny, majority in the House and their utter capture of the Supreme Court, is a grim reality for the year ahead. The Republican Party has long been a cult, where the fear of being shunned or excommunicated, and even more the fear of threatened violence, has dominated the elected GOP membership. To be sure, many lawmakers really believe the Trumpian view of the world, but nearly all the others, including the share who in another era would be standard issue conservatives, have gone along. The ones who strayed and showed some backbone, including Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Fred Upton, and Mike Gallagher, left, leaving a nearly pure cult holding office.
What Trump is doing now, proposing a basket of deplorables as his top choices, is first showing that he is the alpha male, the one in charge, forcing Republicans in Congress either to bow down or face the wrath of their constituents and friends for undermining him right after he won his mandate. Second, by flooding the zone with utterly unacceptable choices, he knows that if they can bring themselves to reject one or even two, they cannot go further than that. And the sacrificial lambs will be replaced by other deplorables.
What can be done about this? To be frank, our options are limited in the short term. But not entirely absent. The threat is palpable, and we need to see that every opportunity to resist the worst actions or implications by this dictator-in-waiting is taken, to the max.
What Biden Must Do
First, that means that Joe Biden, still president until noon on Jan. 20, needs to use every scintilla of his power to counter the worst actions Trump can take.
Start with Trump’s clear obeisance to Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Ukraine.
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