Joe Biden is choosing the usual suspects to fill out his proposed “Cabinet” as President Donald Trump’s chances to expose election fraud continue to meet resistance in U.S. courts. The former vice president’s picks are mainly the same political lifers we all have seen before, because appointments to power positions are what these folks do for a living.
This topic is mainly nauseating to Trump supporters, so we’ll keep it brief.
Antony Blinken
Antony Blinken: An Obama retread, Blinken also served as the former vice president’s national security adviser back in the day. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Blinken’s ties to Mr. Biden date back nearly two decades, beginning when he served as staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while Mr. Biden served as a U.S. senator representing Delaware.” Blinken is hardly a fresh face on the American political scene.
John Kerry: Remember him? The dude who likes to windsurf and play nice in the sandbox with foreign leaders has been asked to become climate czar. Who even knew that was an official position?
Avril Haines: Not exactly a household name, Haines has been lurking within the Democratic confines for-like-ever. Haines is a Democratic spook of the first order who served as a CIA deputy director during the salad days of Barack Obama. Biden wants Haines for the position of Director of National Intelligence.
Janet Yellen: The first woman to become the Federal Reserve chairman has been floated as Biden’s pick for Secretary of the Treasury. Yellen would have to face confirmation. Despite being only 74, Yellen has that Ruth Bader Ginsburg look about her, making you wonder if she’s too old to count back from 100 by seven.
Ron Klain: A political operative of the highest order, Klain was Biden’s first choice out of the box for chief of staff. Klain’s claim to fame was that he oversaw the Ebola epidemic during the Obama years. He’s a Democratic lawyer who was Biden’s right-hand man when he was V.P. Same name, almost the same position.
Woke-Folk Abound
New faces seem to be limited to the category of identity politics. Even then, they are not really new, more like hangers-around and primarily unheard of until now.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield
Linda Thomas-Greenfield: Biden has plucked Thomas-Greenfield out of near obscurity for the U.S. ambassador’s position to the United Nations. She held the august position of U.S. ambassador to – wait for it – Liberia. She’s also held the position of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Ah, okay, whatever.
Michele Flournoy: Biden’s pick for Pentagon chief is a classic “let’s break the glass ceiling” choice. In addition to her primary qualification – that of being a woman – Flournoy appears to be ideal for making foreign wars great again. As Helen Buyniski wrote for RT.com, “Flournoy is admirably suited to this role, as the founder of a think tank (Center for a New American Security) now run by Ukrainian regime-change-cookie-distributor-in-chief Victoria Nuland. She was on the front lines of the Obama administration’s disastrous wars in Libya and Syria and helped expand the war in Afghanistan before departing for the private sector in 2012.” Chocolate chip or peanut butter, anyone?
Julie Chávez Rodriguez: Chávez Rodriguez is headed for the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. She’s not new to the political scene, holding second-tier positions and circling the Democratic wishing well for a while now. She served as one of Biden’s deputy campaign managers and Kamala Harris’ national political director.
Alejandro Mayorkas
Alejandro Mayorkas: Having fled the Fidel Castro regime way back when, Mayorkas is Biden’s pick for Director of Homeland Security. What could be more apropos in a Biden administration than elevating a lawyer who has spent his career advocating for immigrants to become U.S. citizens in the top spot at the Department of Homeland Security? Mayorkas also worked in the Obama administration, where he oversaw the DACA program. Again, he is not a political novice, but he does fit that all-important Democratic “identity” category.
There are many more players Biden is calling on to serve his administration should he become the 46th president of the United States. If you run down the list, these folks fit in one of two categories: They are longtime Democratic politicos of the sort about which one might ask “Oh him? Is he still alive?” or they fall into the “identity category” – woman, check, black, check, Hispanic, check. Any which way you cut it, a Biden administration would hardly represent anything new under the sun.
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Read more from Leesa K. Donner.
