Donald Trump’s resistance doesn’t stop Joe Biden

Joe Biden cannot be discouraged. Donald Trump can still deny the new reality, he creates facts. Its people have meanwhile adapted the Wilmington setting to the new times. The back wall no longer bears the “Biden Harris” campaign lettering. Now there is white on dark blue writing: “Office of the President-Elect.” Above is the great seal of the United States.

However, Biden let himself be drawn into a little mockery of Trump on Tuesday: he called his behavior “an embarrassment” and noted that it would not be beneficial to his legacy. Despite the lack of collaboration, he continues to prepare for the acquisition of the official business: “The fact that they do not want to recognize that we have won does not currently have a major impact on our plans.” The Trump administration, which does not provide its transition team with the necessary funds or access to officials.

Biden’s most important advisor at this stage is his old confidant Ted Kaufman; lead the transition team. On Tuesday Kaufman released a list of some five hundred employees who, mirroring government departments, should prepare to take on official functions. The General Services Administration, the central administrative authority, still refuses to formally determine the election result and will not allow the transition team to have contact with government employees. But Kaufman made it clear that his people were starting their own work and meeting with representatives of associations and think tank experts. The work is extremely important in ensuring national security, fighting the health crisis and proving that America remains the beacon of democracy in the world.

Kaufman knows what he’s talking about. He worked on two laws governing the handover between presidential elections in early November and the inauguration of the elected president on January 20. With thousands of political government employees replaced in Washington after a change of government, the exchange between outgoing and new staff in ministries and regulatory agencies is particularly important. As a senator in 2010, Kaufman was responsible for the Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act, a law that ensures that a transition team is granted limited access before the election. In 2016, after leaving the Senate, he helped change the law from the outside.

Biden named Kaufman, 81, in the spring, immediately after winning the primary, to lead the transition team. Both have known each other for five decades. The Philadelphia-born economist worked for the Dupont chemical company in Wilmington and supported the young Senate candidate’s election campaign in 1972. After the surprise victory of the then 29-year-old Democrat, Kaufman ran his office in Delaware. In 1976 he followed the senator to Washington and became its chief of staff, a position he held until 1995. When Biden resigned from the second chamber in early 2009 to take up the post of vice president under Barack Obama, the governor of Delaware chose Kaufman to take the Senate seat until the November 2010 by-election. Kaufman is currently the most wanted man in Washington. Anyone hoping to work for the future Biden government will have to watch someone whisper their name into Kaufman’s ear.

In addition to Kaufman, Mike Donilon, Biden’s chief strategist on his election team, is the president-elect’s most important advisor. The latter said in the spring that Biden’s campaign should have turned the election into a referendum on Trump. It is about character and values, not problems and world views. The phrase that Biden put at the center of his electoral campaign would have been from him: one is fighting for “the soul of the nation”. As the holder seeks to distract from the central campaign issue – the pandemic – Biden must continue to focus on the crown crisis.

An experiment in the election campaign

Donilon’s analysis turned the campaign into an experiment. In order not to contradict her message, campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon was able to thwart Trump’s huge final mobilization only with a virtual campaign. Biden’s people knew that the challenger’s advantage in the contested states was closer than the polls indicated. Donilon has known Biden since the early 1980s. He has since advised him in various locations. From 2009 to 2013, Donilon, whose brother Tom Barack was Obama’s National Security Advisor, was the Vice President’s chief advisor in the White House.

The third old confidant, who is now back on board, is Steve Ricchetti, his former Vice Presidential Chief of Staff. Kaufman, Donilon and Ricchetti also formed the trio that prepared Biden’s presidential offer in 2015. After the death of his son Beau from cancer, who had asked his father on his deathbed not to end his political career after End of his term as vice president, Biden has kept a candidacy open. But he hesitated whether to do all this to himself. In the end, it was Donilon who advised his grieving father not to run: “I don’t think you should.” So Biden decided. Trump’s election changed everything. Again Biden played his old trio. Now he is preparing the 46th president for his office.