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| Fed Chair Janet Yellen |
One of the more notable aspects of yesterday's announcements was the historic nature of the field. Biden had promised to make his Cabinet a "reflection of the nation," and yesterday's announcements indicated he intends to make good on that promise. In particular, Biden's announcements for Director of National Intelligence (Avril Haines) and Secretary of Treasury (Janet Yellen) were historic in both being the first women to hold those positions. Yellen's announcement is extremely noteworthy because that position has existed since George Washington was president, and yet no woman has ever led the Treasury in the United States. Yellen was considered one of the frontrunners for the position; another, Lael Brainard now appears to be the frontrunner to head the Federal Reserve in 2022 when Jerome Powell's term expires in 2022 (Yellen was the first woman to chair the Federal Reserve). As a result, Joe Biden will become the first president in American history to have women lead the bulk of his economic team.
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| Tony Blinken (center) with then-VP Joe Biden |
The most noteworthy aspect of yesterday's announcements were that this is roughly the field that most people had predicted for Biden. After the shock of some of Trump's picks through the past four years, Biden went with people who have deep government experience, and almost all of whom have links to Biden's previous time in the White House. Yellen was Obama's Federal Reserve Chair, Haines his Deputy National Security Advisor (and before her, incoming-Secretary of State Tony Blinken held that position). Alejandro Mayorkas was Obama's Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield served in the Obama State Department. Biden spent much of his time on the campaign stump talking about his connections with President Obama, and that he would be an extension back to that era for Democrats-with these picks, Biden is doubling-down on that promise.
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| Secretary of State John Kerry (D-MA) |
This means, though, that there's not a lot of investment in the future of the Democratic Party, particularly the left wing. While nominations of people like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to the Cabinet were a lost cause, progressives didn't have a voice here. None of these figures are controversial or really to the left of Biden politically (though obviously none are that much to his right), but instead indicate a center-left government, one similar to what Biden promised on the campaign trail.
But this also means that progressives don't have a proper champion yet. The closest they get is former Secretary of State John Kerry, who is ideologically to the left of most of these figures, but A) is not an official member of the cabinet, but instead an envoy for the State Department serving as a global ambassador on the climate, likely trying to repair some of the damage done by Trump through his pulling out of the Paris Treaty and B) John Kerry is a decades-long politician, one who has served at the top of government since the mid-1980's...it's doubtful progressives see him as one of their own. Biden has a lot of cabinet left, but it seems probable that he is going to be favoring left-of-center bureaucrats whom most of the country has never heard of, rather than picking a fight with Mitch McConnell (even Kerry won't require approval in the Senate).
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| Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) |
Kerry, of course, is a former member of Congress, and that's going to be a key phrase as we look through the rest of the cabinet, as despite lots of evidence that Biden saw Congress as his best shot of injecting some new figures (rather than those who had served in his previous administration) into his new government, only one sitting member of Congress, Rep. Cedric Richmond, has been tapped to serve in Biden's government.
This makes sense when you look at the margins of the next Congress. The Senate will have no less than 48 Democrats and no more than 50 (depending on the Georgia races), so Biden will either have the narrowest of majorities or a slim minority (that could potentially turn majority in 2022 with probable open seats in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, & North Carolina positioned as pickup opportunities). Some of the bigger names in the Senate like Angus King and Amy Klobuchar, both of whom were rumored for the Cabinet, aren't going to be tapped because that would mean their Senate seats are up in 2022, making that path to a majority in the back half of Biden's first term all the more difficult, if not out-of-reach. With McConnell unlikely to confirm many (if any) judges if he holds the majority, Biden will not want to jeopardize that chance at a majority by giving his party more tossup seats in two years. Additionally, the House is going to have a 4-5 seat majority for Nancy Pelosi, so if Biden wants to get anything done, he can only take a couple of seats in the body (even safe seats like Richmond's) without risking no legislation passing during his first 100 days. Biden, like many Democrats, probably thought he'd have a stronger majority than this in the House (and could've picked more members), but with Democrats barely holding on in the lower chamber, Richmond could be one of the only figures to give up their seat. Expect instead to hear other former members of Congress similar to John Kerry (like Heidi Heitkamp or Doug Jones) in future announcements from the incoming administration.
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| National Security Advisor Susan Rice |
Two big names that didn't show up yesterday were Susan Rice & Pete Buttigieg, who were seen as frontrunners for Secretary of State and UN Ambassador, respectively. With this snub, Rice (who has now been the runner-up for both State and Biden's VP), this probably means the end of the road for her in Biden's administration. Unless she were to get CIA/FBI, there aren't really any other positions that she'd be qualified for without it being seen as a step down (particularly with Haines getting DNI). This is almost certainly an indication that Biden, a longtime ally of Rice's career, doesn't think the Democrats will get the Senate in January, as Mitch McConnell has indicated that Rice would have a difficult, if not impossible, path through the Senate.
Buttigieg's chances are probably still there (there seems to be a strong indication that Biden wants to put the young Democrat in his cabinet), but UN Ambassador would've helped Buttigieg's presidential prospects by shoring up one of his policy weak points (he has little foreign policy experience as a small-town mayor), and thus getting something like Veterans Affairs (a likely option for him at this point) or a lower-level ambassadorship might keep him employed, but hurt his chances for future runs for higher office. Buttigieg, who is just 38, has clear talent but doesn't have an obvious path to higher office in Indiana-if he gets buried in the Biden administration, it'll be difficult for him to dovetail that into a future run for the White House.
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