Climate Policy in the Biden Era: Divided They Are

Defund the police? Defund my butt. I’m a proud West Virginia Democrat.

We do not have some crazy socialist agenda.

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV)

Introduction

President-Elect Biden ran as a unifier in a time of deep division. His job as president has been made all the more difficult by voters having denied the Democrats control of Congress.

The last president who entered his first-term without his party in control of Congress was George H. W. Bush in 1989. The last Democrat who suffered the same fate was Grover Cleveland in 1885. Same party control of Congress is no guarantee of smooth sailing for a president — divisions within parties are common and frequently acted upon.

Midterm elections are historically harmful to a sitting president. According to Politifact, a sitting president’s party has on average lost 32 House seats and more than two Senate seats in midterm elections since 1862. The only presi-dents to beat the odds were Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934, Bill Clinton in 1998, and George W. Bush in 2002.

Should Biden become the first president since George H. W. Bush to enter office without the Senate under his party’s control, the task of confirming his cabinet will turn into a partisan minefield. As the…