Ought to Kamala Harris win in November, her administration might start within the weakest beginning place of any in a era. Her allies are already fretting over what to do about it.
Democrats near the vp have grown more and more frightened that Republicans will flip the Senate subsequent month even when Harris wins — a situation that might make Harris the primary president since George H.W. Bush to start out her time period and not using a majority within the higher chamber.
The fears have sparked a flurry of post-election situation planning throughout the Democratic Celebration, based on interviews with greater than a half-dozen advisers and allies, at the same time as Harris stays locked in a good race with lower than three weeks left to go.
Harris allies have sought inventive methods to put in a Cupboard ought to a Republican Senate refuse to verify her picks, together with extending present Biden officers’ tenure, appointing a slate of appearing secretaries or — in a single long-shot situation making the rounds in Democratic circles — even jamming via some nominees earlier than Harris formally takes workplace.
Others are gaming out the legislative battles over tax coverage and authorities funding that can outline 2025, debating which of her prime coverage priorities could be folded into must-pass packages — and what trade-offs will probably be essential to safe them.
A GOP-controlled Senate would pose a right away risk to Harris’ presidential ambitions, narrowing her personnel selections, sharply limiting her coverage agenda and curbing her affect on any Supreme Court docket vacancies. Missing a lot in the best way of non-public cross-aisle relationships with Senate Republicans, Harris, they fear, must spend her essential first days mired in a seek for compromise.
“It doesn’t matter what, I believe it should be a really troublesome time for the following two years if the situation is Harris wins the presidency however loses the Senate,” stated former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, who has endorsed Harris. “I think that she could have some Republicans who will work together with her. I do not suppose that would be the majority or wherever close to it within the Republican caucus.”
Harris’ transition preparations are already effectively delayed, given the vp’s late entry into the race. Previous presidential transitions have begun work as a lot as six months earlier than Election Day; Harris solely turned the nominee within the final three months.
However the traditionally uncommon situation Harris would probably face makes that planning all of the extra essential, these concerned stated, to make sure she enters the Oval Workplace with a transparent technique that may overcome hard-line Republican opposition — and decrease the Democratic infighting over coverage and personnel that would squander her slim window of alternative.
They described an early presidency that might be essentially extra reasonable and compromise-oriented in its management and legislative ambitions underneath a split-government situation, but clear-eyed concerning the areas the place Harris believes she will be able to nonetheless construct on the Biden administration’s progress: well being care, taxes and housing.
“There’s numerous balancing act right here,” one exterior adviser stated of narrowing Harris’ expansive marketing campaign platform all the way down to a extra pragmatic agenda. “However meaning she has to select and select amongst her kids. And youngsters don’t wish to be not noted.”
Harris spokespeople declined to weigh in on transition planning, with marketing campaign aides as a substitute pointing to the work they’ve completed to move off a possible Republican Senate. The marketing campaign has up to now transferred practically $25 million to the Democratic Senatorial Marketing campaign Committee and different teams centered on electing down-ballot Democrats.
“Vice President Harris is working arduous to assist Democrats win key Senate and Home races so we are able to have a coalition prepared on day one to take motion to decrease prices for the American folks, defend reproductive freedom, and different key priorities,” stated Mia Ehrenberg, a marketing campaign spokesperson.
Not since Bush’s election in 1988 has a president taken workplace with out allies controlling the Senate. The final time a Democrat received the White Home alongside a GOP Senate was greater than a century earlier than that, when Grover Cleveland was first elected in 1884.
This time round, few consider Harris can be afforded a lot leeway in stocking her authorities or advancing her priorities from Republican senators incentivized to combat her agenda at each flip.
Hagel, a Nebraska Republican who served as Protection secretary throughout the Obama administration, expressed religion that former President Donald Trump’s maintain on the GOP would break if he loses once more. However he doubted it could make Harris’ presidency a lot simpler.
“There will probably be, definitely, a right-wing group of Republicans — I do not know what number of — who will primarily block every thing that she tries to do,” stated Hagel, who now works on veterans points as chair of the Veterans Justice Fee on the Council on Legal Justice.
Democrats each inside and outdoors the Harris camp have explored a variety of concepts for staffing her administration within the face of GOP resistance, equivalent to protecting some senior Biden officers of their present roles. Whereas Cupboard officers usually provide their resignation on the finish of an administration, their Senate confirmations don’t expire, offering a possible lifeline to a Harris administration. Harris might additionally briefly promote sure aides into Cupboard jobs with out Senate affirmation, the place they might then function appearing secretaries for months earlier than dealing with a vote.
Some are floating a bolder technique: Ask President Joe Biden to appoint a few of Harris’ picks throughout the post-election lame-duck interval, permitting Democrats to hurry them via Senate affirmation earlier than dropping management of the chamber on Jan. 3, 2025.
However Harris advisers have up to now downplayed the viability of that choice, citing logistical hurdles and issues the preemptive gambit would torch what little bipartisan goodwill may in any other case exist.
Harris is as a substitute more likely to take a extra deliberate method to staffing up, counting on scores of Biden aides keen to remain on to run her administration whereas her nominees wind their approach via the affirmation course of. In 2021, Biden had the overwhelming majority of his Cupboard in place by March. Whereas Harris will definitely need to usher in her personal folks, doing so might take notably longer than that.
“There’s not going to be the frenzy essentially to get your crew in place as a result of that is partly her crew,” stated former Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), who nonetheless expressed confidence Democrats might nonetheless maintain the Senate. “She will be able to get her administration up and operating seamlessly with out having to place forth a single identify.”
These new nominees will in some circumstances be extra reasonable in order to win a pair Republican votes, advisers and allies conceded. Former lawmakers and longtime congressional staffers additionally grow to be extra interesting for Cupboard jobs, given their ties to Capitol Hill. And inevitably, at the least one nominee received’t make it via — greater than two-thirds of the tie-breaking votes Harris has taken as vp have been associated to confirming political appointees.
Regardless of the angst over personnel, most Democrats concerned within the transition discussions argued Harris must protect her political capital for the string of legislative fights in her first months — together with a serious tax coverage invoice, authorities funding deadlines and a possible debt ceiling conflict that would as soon as once more put the economic system in danger.
These must-pass payments have diminished typical split-government issues that nothing will get completed. As an alternative, Democrats consider they’ll have to winnow her priorities in an effort to handle expectations throughout the get together and head off jockeying amongst curiosity teams.
That probably means dropping among the loftier goals which have energized Democratic voters, like codifying Roe v. Wade, which might first require 51 votes to eradicate the filibuster. And there stay grave, unanswered issues about Harris’ capacity to fill a hypothetical Supreme Court docket emptiness ought to Republicans refuse to grant her nominee a listening to.
“When you begin going up the chain with judges it will get more durable and more durable,” stated Jones. “I believe the timing goes to be fascinating if there’s a Supreme Court docket decide.”
Harris allies have centered on increasing the Little one Tax Credit score and lengthening beneficiant Obamacare subsidies as achievable prime targets in a primary time period, in addition to different baby care investments that Republicans could conform to in change for preserving among the Trump-era tax cuts resulting from expire subsequent 12 months.
A number of of these allies additionally emphasised the necessity to push for a separate bipartisan bundle on par with the infrastructure legislation that Biden signed in his first 12 months, pointing to housing as a possible space the place Harris might search 60 votes for a invoice filled with incentives for builders to construct extra and expanded assist for renters and homebuyers.
“If the margins are shut, then the administration has numerous juice for these issues,” stated one other Democrat engaged on the coverage planning, including that there’s hope some Republicans can even be inclined to assist broadly widespread concepts like increasing limits on insulin costs.
Nonetheless, Harris allies acknowledged attaining any of these targets will take concerted outreach and relationship constructing, particularly with the few Republican moderates who would abruptly wield outsize energy, like Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. They view the work Harris did on the Senate Intelligence Committee — which earned the reward of a number of Republican members — and the dinners she hosted with GOP girls within the Senate as a mannequin.
And a few hope that her outreach to Republicans throughout the marketing campaign — together with rallying with former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and promising to nominate a Republican to her Cupboard — will show useful relating to governing.
However there are limits. Neither Murkowski nor Collins has publicly expressed assist and even faint reward for Harris’ candidacy. And maybe extra necessary will probably be Harris’ relationship with whomever can be the Senate majority chief, who controls what laws or nominees even get an opportunity at a ground vote.
Harris has no obvious relationship with the one of many frontrunners for the job, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota. Harris did sit on two of the identical Senate committees as the opposite lead candidate, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, often working collectively. However that overlap has completed little to melt Cornyn’s harsh assaults in latest months on Harris’ work on immigration points.
Nonetheless, Harris’ allies are holding out hope for a post-Trump fracturing of the GOP which may push some faction of Republican senators nearer to the middle — or at very least, persuade them it’s price it for their very own political futures to open a channel to a Harris administration.
“The duty forward is to win, after which see what occurs,” stated Jim Kessler, govt vp for coverage on the centrist Democratic suppose tank Third Manner. “You’ve acquired all these members that spent $60 million and fought like hell to get there, and so they’re going to say finally, ‘I need to do one thing. I need to get one thing completed.’”
