By John Podhoretz
Joe Biden begins his presidency in a position that’s both strong andweak. Strong... His party holds the majority in both houses of Congress. He won more popular votes than any other candidate in history, besting his rival by more than 7 million votes and by a 74-vote gap in the Electoral College. And he will be sworn in as president in the wake of the assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters, which has shocked the country to its core and left Biden’s partisan opposition divided, defensive, and rocked on its heels.
Weak... An election that featured the surgical excision of Donald Trump from the presidency did not include a ringing endorsement of Democratic control of Washington, D.C. After November 3, the Democrats found themselves down a dozen seats in the House and maintaining their majority with a mere margin of 5. In the Senate, Democrats failed to knock off seemingly vulnerable Republican incumbents in Iowa, Maine, and South Carolina, and battled their way into a 50-50 tie (which hands them the majority in the upper chamber due to the tie-breaking vote of the incoming vice president, who serves as president of the Senate).
68
January 2021
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