Theda Skocpol on successes of the first two years of the Obama-Biden Administration

Theda Skocpol analyzed the Obama-Biden Administration during its first term in Obama and America's Political Future (2012). It's obviously relevant today, since Joe Biden is now coming back as President with a White House team heavily populated with veterans of the Obama Administration. It's also facing the COVID-19 pandemic and an economic depression exacerbated intensely by the pandemic, both requiring immediate and massive federal action.

Both also came to office presenting themselves as conciliatory leaders to replace deeply unpopular, bitterly divisive Republican predecessors. Skocpol's work provides some helpful reminders of what kinds of obstacles Biden and Harris are likely to encounter from a highly polarized, politically reactionary Republican opposition. The asymmetric partisan polarization in American politics, with a highly combative and ideologically far-right Republican party confronting a comparatively timid, centrist Democratic Party that nevertheless has a more powerful and vocal progressive wing than in 2008, is still a central feature of the American political situation in 2020.

One important difference is that Obama-Biden came to office in 2009 with the considerable advantage of a solid majority in the House and a 60-vote majority in the Senate. If the Democrats win the two Georgia Senate elections on January 5, they will have a razor-thin majority in the Senate and a House majority reduced from what it has been the last two years. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer have proven themselves to be sadly weak and flat-footed in confronting the many outrageous misconduct of the Republican Trump-Pence Administration. Their leadership mainly based on their fund-raising prowess, their political strategy and messaging leave very much to be desired from a partisan Democratic perspective.

I plan to return a few times to Skocpol's Obama book in trying to illustrate the context in which Biden will be fighting - or choosing not to fight - with the Republicans. In 2009, the Republicans began pursuing from the very start of the Administraration what Skocpol calls "all-out opposition to Obama and Democratic initiatives" that she calls "a cold-blooded political bet." From the Republican partisan viewpoint, that strategy was effective for them. And they appear to be already taking the same approach to the incoming Obama-Biden Administration.

In this post, I'm quoting her summary of Obama's accomplishment during his first two Presidential years:

Given all of the difficulties the president and Democrats faced in 2009 and 2010, if we are just toting up legislative and regulatory accomplishments, the bills passed and decisions issued, Obama’s ambitious agenda for policy change progressed quite remarkably — to institute comprehensive health reform, reform higher education loans, tighten regulation of financial institutions, and tweak many other realms of law and regulation. A new New Deal of sorts was successfully launched by President Obama and congressional Democrats in 2009 and 2010. But much of what happened was either invisible or ominously incomprehensible to the majority of American citizens. Big, worrisome, and easily caricatured — especially at a time of economic stress when people know one thing for sure: the national economy is not getting stronger fast enough to ensure that a rising tide lifts all boats. To advance major governmental reforms in such a context was an impressive accomplishment — but it was also a recipe for endless political controversy and electoral blowback. [my emphasis]

There is a UC-Berkeley lecture from 2012 by Skocpol on "Obama, the Tea Party, and the Future of American Politics". Podcast available here. This is the YouTube version (dated 10/25/2012):

In the book and the lecture, she uses the experience of the Roosevelt Administration and the New Deal to frame the experience of the first term of Obama-Biden.