While the coming days in Washington may not be as wrenching as last week — which saw a horrific recreation of
the terror inside the Capitol on January 6 by House impeachment managers — they will be even more critical to the nation’s short-term fate. Biden can now claim the full attention of Congress and the public as he seeks to drive through
his relief package and end the pandemic and will make
his first official trip out of Washington since being sworn in, including to
a CNN town hall in Wisconsin on Tuesday.
The new President is already moving aggressively to fill the post-Trump vacuum. He forcibly pushed his $1.9 trillion Covid-relief plan on Monday morning in a statement marking the reopening of open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act.
The legislation “will ramp up testing, tracing, and our national vaccination program,” Biden said, adding that it would also “take big steps to lower health costs and expand access to care for all Americans, including those who have lost their jobs.”
But the acquittal of Trump, who tried and failed to kill the ACA, at the
hands of a majority of Republican senators Saturday proved the former president’s personality cult will make him a dominant force in the civil war gripping the party in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections. His staying power, even while out of office, will therefore still have a huge impact on the mood in Washington, and Biden’s ability to bring the nation together and advance his priorities.
Prominent Republicans like
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and potential 2024 presidential candidate
Nikki Haley are already maneuvering to take the party in a different direction. Only time will tell whether Trump’s influence will be quite so omnipresent when he is miles from the action in his luxury resort in Florida and Congress is no longer debating his political fate. And
a flurry of legal concerns, stemming from his past business practices and attempts to steal last year’s election could further damage the future political prospects of an ex-President who was willing to destroy US democracy in a bid to stay in power.
Biden’s chance
The end of the impeachment trial means that for the first time since he became president last month, Biden will be able to bring the power of his office to bear, as he steps up his effort to win swift passage of his relief plan with a 50-50 Senate that Democrats control because of Vice President Kamala Harris’ ability to break ties. The President will begin trips out of Washington this week — a rite of a new administration so far trimmed by Covid-19. On Friday, Biden will seek to restore US global leadership in another departure from the Trump administration, by taking part in
a virtual meeting of G7 leaders to discuss the pandemic.
Sen. Chris Murphy
made a case on “State of the Union” Sunday that Democrats had effectively managed the trial, advanced Biden’s Cabinet nominees and are conducting negotiations on the Covid-19 relief package.
“We have been doing three things at once,” the Connecticut Democrat said. But that balancing act would have come unstuck had the trial dragged on much longer — a factor in Democratic senators pushing back at a surprise bid on Saturday by House Impeachment managers to call witnesses.
There is no time to lose since the success of Biden’s presidency — and the nation itself — will depend on his capacity to end the pandemic and rescue the economy. And the crisis is at a pivotal point. Cases of the virus are falling fast and death tolls, which typically lag new infections, will soon do the same. But
new variants of Covid-19 that appear more contagious are spreading. This makes new funds for a vaccination drive contained in the congressional package increasingly crucial. With extended unemployment benefits set to run out in March, millions of Americans are relying on Congress. The bill also includes billions of dollars in funding to safely reopen schools — an increasingly troublesome…
Read More: Impeachment: The end of Trump’s trial lifts an oppressive cloud from Washington