Sweeping change under Biden? Hold the thought
He was thought to have the leeway to push for reform, but, for starters, he didn't win by a landslide. Congress numbers and the Supreme Court aren't in his favour either.
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IN the aftermath of the nomination of former Vice-President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate in August - a time coinciding with the spread of the coronavirus and the ensuing economic downturn - some Democrats were fantasising that their man would have an opportunity to go big and to preside over a historic restructuring of the American economy, not unlike President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal.
A Democratic friend quoted to me then the famous political dictum by Rahm Emanuel, former aide to President Bill Clinton and later the mayor of Chicago: "You never let a serious crisis go to waste" and to use it "as an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before".
My friend, a member of the left-leaning progressive wing of the Democratic Party who had supported the nomination of the socialist Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont as president, admitted that the former VP was not a socialist but a centrist Democrat and a proud member of the Washington establishment.
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