The Note: Biden faces new fissures as president-elect
Biden’s efforts to heal divisions face complications from fast-moving events.
The TAKE with Rick Klein
Nothing in the post-election turbulence is changing President-elect Joe Biden's planning for the presidency.
But the celebrations that broke out Saturday in many of the nation's cities have already faded. Now, Biden's efforts to heal divisions are already facing complications from fast-moving events.
There's President Donald Trump, of course, promising a prolonged legal fight over an election that won't be all that close. It's almost certain to fall short, but still sets up an environment in the next Congress where Republican senators -- still on track to be committee chairmen -- focus on investigations and fringe theories that may aim to delegitimize the Biden presidency.
Speaking of the Senate, Biden's commitment to working across the aisle gets an immediate test in Georgia, where a pair of January run-offs represent Democrats' last chance to take control of the chamber. Biden is leading the vote count in the state, but it's not clear when or whether Biden or his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, will be involved in the unusual double run-off campaigns there.
Meanwhile, in the House, the Democrats' moderate and progressive wings are openly warring about the lessons of Election Day and how to apply them to governance. Some in the thinned-out centrist ranks are blaming the left, while Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is serving early notice to Biden that progressives will be watching the transition closely.
"This isn't even just about winning an argument," Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said in an interestingly timed interview with The New York Times. "It's that if they keep going after the wrong thing, I mean, they're just setting up their own obsolescence."
Biden's first speech as president-elect spoke more explicitly to those who supported Trump in the general election than to progressives who may have only reluctantly voted Biden-Harris.
"I'll work as hard for those who didn't vote for me as those who did," Biden said.
Many Republicans aren't ready to hear that message, of course. As it turns out, a whole lot of Democrats aren't, either.
Election latest: Joe Biden leads the popular vote total with 75,551,684 votes and is projected to have 279 electoral votes. President Donald Trump follows with 71,189,789 popular votes and is projected to have 214 electoral votes.
The RUNDOWN with MaryAlice Parks
The president's legal team is continuing to grasp at straws. While they spent most of the weekend making claims about election fraud, they failed to produce any evidence or find local election officials agreeing with (or even entertaining) their assertions.
Sunday in Las Vegas a few of the president's associates held a press conference where they condemned numerous state voting laws and made rather wild accusations. They lamented the state's use of signature verification machines, although the issue has been litigated several times and a judge again approved the use of the machines just days ago. Asked if the team was submitting any additional lawsuits to accompany their nonlegal complaints, they said only that they were reviewing all options.
Another hurdle for the Trump team is that the margins continue to move in Biden's favor. As of Monday morning, Biden was up by more than 34,000 votes in Nevada, meaning that even if some ballots are later found to be erroneous or invalid, the discovery would be unlikely to change the results.
The TIP with Benjamin Siegel
President-elect Joe Biden isn't waiting for President Trump's concession to ramp up his transition plans.
On Monday, he'll launch a COVID-19 task force led by leading medical experts who advised his campaign on the pandemic since March, including former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and former FDA Commissioner David Kessler.
Teams of experts known as "agency review teams" will begin working to prepare for the handoff between the Trump and Biden administrations at various federal agencies.
And the president-elect could begin naming key members of his White House team, including his chief of staff, as soon as this week, as staffers working behind the scenes begin preparing for the flurry of executive actions a President Biden could take after being sworn in, from reentering the Paris climate agreement to reinstating the DACA program.
This work will begin as the General Services Administration, an obscure federal agency that helps manage presidential transitions, faces more pressure to formally acknowledge Biden's victory -- a move that would free up more office space and federal funding for his effort, and allow his team to begin communicating with counterparts working on transition planning inside the agencies.
"An ascertainment has not yet been made. GSA and its Administrator will continue to abide by, and fulfill, all requirements under the law," a GSA spokesperson said Saturday.
The PLAYLIST
FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast. On Saturday, the major networks declared that Joe Biden is set to be the next president of the United States. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew reacts to the news, breaks down trends within the electorate and discusses what comes next. https://53eig.ht/38hZNDk
ABC News' "Start Here" podcast. Monday morning's episode features ABC News senior congressional correspondent Mary Bruce, who brings us the latest on Joe Biden as his team begins transition plans. ABC News' Anne Flaherty explains how Biden plans to tackle the worsening COVID-19 pandemic. And former Democratic senator and ABC News contributor Heidi Heitkamp lays out the challenges Biden faces in uniting the country and the Democratic Party. http://apple.co/2HPocUL
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