President Joe Biden

There needn't be any illusions about what might be accomplished, but it's nice to want to use the President's name again.

At 78 years old, Biden is the oldest U.S. president to take the oath of office. He is the 15th vice president to become the country’s chief executive.

Harris’ vice presidency is historic in several regards: She’s the first female, Black and South Asian person to hold the position.

Amanda Marcotte notes that a whole bunch of executive orders are lined up.

[T]here's still good reason to be concerned that [Biden's] instincts — he loves to talk about bipartisanship, for instance — are too moderate and compromising, and will lead to Senate Republicans derailing his efforts with phony "talks" where they pretend they're willing to negotiate in order to run out the clock. But there are also promising signs that Biden understands that seriousness of the moment and, as David Roberts at Vox advised in December, is willing to focus on "doing as much good on as many fronts as fast as possible" instead of getting bogged down with the GOP's derailing tactics.

Update (April 29):  As President Biden finished his first 100 days in office, he laid out his agenda before a joint session of Congress. Amanda Marcotte notes not everyone was enthusiastic.

Republicans are grumpy, extremely grumpy. Republican Senators watching the speech last night collectively looked like they smelled a fart, and not just because they were wearing masks. They're mad, not just because they know he's right. They're mad because they know he's popular and what he's saying is popular. They'll block as much of his agenda as they can and hope that voter suppression and gerrymandering do the rest. But on the merits of the argument itself? They're toast.

It's not because Biden is some super-politician. It's because Republicans spent decades making politics into a reality TV show. Now that we're facing a real crisis, the public is turning its eyes towards the comfort of a real politician who wants to do real policy. And Republicans have nothing to say in response.

Update (April 30):  Heather Digby Parton reminds us that a handful of Democratic Senators will decide if President Biden is successful or not.

The Republicans cannot credibly oppose Biden's agenda. Their arguments about debt and tax cuts have been refuted, their ideas about radical individualism have been shredded by our experience with the pandemic, their claims to moral authority in the wake of [Fuckface] are simply laughable. All they have is power and they will wield it mercilessly. But they have no way to explain it to the broader American public that makes any sense.

The only question, then, is whether or not that makes any sense to the centrist Democrats like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin or the two senators from Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly. Sadly, there is a fair chance that other than the hardcore [Dear Leader believers] who will believe anything they're told, these Democratic senators will be the only people in America to whom it does. They must be persuaded that now is the time, while the Republicans are ideologically spent and the economy is set to blast off, to do something real and meaningful for the American people.

Assuming these Senators don't want to see an authoritarian return to power, then they need to realize Republicans have zero interest in "bi-partisanship" or helping anyone.