Elections

WASHINGTON — As President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. prepares to name his first slate of cabinet appointees, more Republicans are starting to push for the transition to officially begin and calling on their conservative colleagues to openly acknowledge his victory.Chris Christie, the Republican former governor of New Jersey, called the conduct of President Trump’s legal team, which has indulged in a web of conspiracy theories about voter fraud, “a national embarrassment,” given the blistering dismissals of their lawsuits in court and their failure to produce evidence of widespread improprieties.“They allege fraud outside the courtroom, but when they go inside the courtroom, they don’t plead fraud and they don’t argue fraud,” Mr. Christie, a longtime Trump ally, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “Elections have consequences, and we cannot continue to act as if something happened here that didn’t happen.”The Trump campaign on Sunday disavowed Sidney Powell, one of the lawyers who had floated many of those baseless claims, even though she had appeared at a news conference alongside Trump lawyers and campaign officials and been embraced by allies.Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, on Saturday congratulated Mr. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their victory, saying that the president had “exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge” the state’s result after a federal judge dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit challenging the election outcome there.Many of the strongest denunciations of the president’s refusal to concede have come from Republicans like Mr. Christie and Mr. Toomey, who are no longer in office or have announced their retirement. But as Mr. Trump has continued to deny the results of the election in an unflinching assault on the democratic process, a few more sitting lawmakers have tiptoed up to join them in subtly urging the president to at least begin the transition process.Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican in the House, on Friday became the most senior Republican to urge Mr. Trump in a statement to begin “respecting the sanctity of our electoral process” should the nation’s courts continue to reject his legal team’s challenges to the outcome.Still, most Republican lawmakers have not challenged Mr. Trump, in part because they fear that a public acknowledgment of Mr. Biden’s victory could undercut support from their conservative base before two critical Senate runoff elections in Georgia in January.In a nod to those concerns, Mr. Christie suggested that Mr. Trump would better spend his time supporting the Republican candidates in Georgia “rather than looking in the rearview mirror.” (The president spent much of his weekend at his golf course in Virginia and deriding Republicans, including Ms. Cheney, Mr. Toomey and Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, who publicly undercut his barrage of false claims.)The few Republicans who made their own ascertainment in the 15 days since Mr. Biden won the election were increasingly blunt in their assessment of Mr. Trump’s prospects for overturning the results. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, released a statement condemning the president’s pressure campaign on state legislatures as “not only unprecedented but inconsistent with our democratic process.” Mr. Hogan responded to Mr. Trump’s criticisms by suggesting that the president “stop golfing and concede.”“Here again in Michigan, it’s not a razor-thin margin — it’s 154,000 votes,” Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, one of the first congressional Republicans to congratulate Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris, said in an appearance on CNN. Mr. Trump has made false charges of widespread fraud in Michigan and pressured state legislators to undo the results, but “154,000 votes is plenty to overcome,” Mr. Upton said. “I mean, it’s over.”Other Republicans were more tentative on Sunday, but they edged toward recognizing Mr. Biden’s victory by amplifying calls for the Trump administration to allow the transition to begin, pushing for Mr. Biden to begin receiving intelligence briefings as part of that process. Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said on Twitter that “I agree briefings should occur” as he shared a clip of Ron Klain, the incoming White House chief of staff, warning of the consequences of withholding classified information and access to agency officials.“It’s past time to start a transition, to at least cooperate with a transition,” Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, said on Sunday, even as he insisted that Mr. Trump should have additional time to pursue legal challenges to the outcome of the election. “I’d rather have a president who has more than one day to prepare.”Members of Mr. Biden’s transition team, even as they announced plans to unveil cabinet appointments on Tuesday, continued to warn that the new administration would be severely handicapped without advance intelligence briefings and updates on plans to develop and distribute a coronavirus vaccine.Jennifer Psaki, a senior adviser to the transition team, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that F.B.I. background checks, a key part of the confirmation of cabinet secretaries, could not be done until the General Services Administration “ascertained” Mr. Biden’s victory. The process would give Mr. Biden and his staff members access to federal resources, data and personnel.The transition team wants to “talk to the people doing the job right now so that we can be ready,” Representative Cedric Richmond, a Louisiana Democrat who is set to leave his seat for a role in the Biden administration, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, urged his party to speak out against the president’s behavior, calling on “senior Republican leaders to join those who have begun to come out and say, ‘Trump’s behavior is inexcusable.’”“Look,” Mr. Bolton continued on “State of the Union,” “the Republican Party is not going to be saved by hiding in a spider hole. We need all of our leaders to come out and say, ‘The election is over.’”Hailey Fuchs, Lucy Tompkins and Carol Rosenberg contributed reporting. More

WASHINGTON — Officials at the Group of 20 summit meeting released a closing statement on Sunday that served as perhaps the Trump administration’s final reminder of the wide gulf between the United States and its allies on handling global threats like the coronavirus pandemic and climate change.In its statement, or communiqué, the group emphasized what it called the “important mandates of the United Nations’ systems and agencies, primarily the W.H.O.,” referring to the World Health Organization, an agency Mr. Trump announced a withdrawal from in July, threatening to cut off one its largest sources of funding. The communiqué, released after a two-day virtual meeting hosted by Saudi Arabia, said the group supported strengthening the W.H.O.’s “overall effectiveness in coordinating and supporting the global response to the pandemic and the central efforts of member states.”Over all, the communiqué offered little in terms of any breakthrough announcements beyond general appeals for more global cooperation and “affordable and equitable access” to therapeutics and vaccines. The lack of more significant initiatives underscored how difficult it is for the G20 to carry out an agenda when the United States is indifferent — Mr. Trump skipped part of the summit to play golf — or even hostile to many of its positions, even during a pandemic that has killed more than 1.3 million people globally.The statement came the same day as another reminder of Mr. Trump’s rejection of international agreements: The United States formally withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty, negotiated three decades ago to allow nations to fly over one another’s territory with elaborate sensor equipment to assure that they are not preparing for military action. American officials had long complained that Russia was violating the accord, and Mr. Trump had announced the action in May, starting a six-month clock on the withdrawal.President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. had favored remaining in the treaty. When he arrives in office in January, he will quickly have to confront the expiration of the last remaining major arms control agreement with Russia, New START, a clean extension of which Mr. Trump has refused to sign off on. Mr. Biden has said he will try to save that accord.The G20’s closing statement on Sunday also referred to other areas where Mr. Trump has caused friction, calling climate change one of “the most pressing challenges of our time” and saying that the Financial Stability Board, a group of international regulators, was “continuing to examine the financial stability implications” of the issue. The United States had resisted the inclusion of climate change in a joint declaration of finance ministers this year but eventually relented.Mr. Trump, who has brushed aside dire predictions about the effects of climate change and routinely refused to acknowledge it as a man-made problem, most recently removed the scientist responsible for the National Climate Assessment. That scientist served as the federal government’s premier contribution to climate knowledge and the foundation for regulations to combat global warming.In his remarks at the virtual meeting on Sunday morning, Mr. Trump reiterated his opposition to the Paris Agreement, claiming it was “not designed to save the environment” but instead “was designed to kill the American economy.” The United States formally withdrew from the climate accord this month, but Mr. Biden has pledged to rejoin.Mr. Trump’s go-it-alone dynamic has hampered conferences of global leaders since he took office. Before last year’s G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Mr. Trump set the tone by attacking America’s closest allies, including the host country. When he attended the 70th anniversary of NATO in London last year, Mr. Trump left abruptly after an embarrassing video of other world leaders privately mocking him surfaced.The lack of American leadership at such forums comes as the world continues to face severe economic strain from the pandemic. The International Monetary Fund projected last month that the global economy would contract 4.4 percent in 2020 and that the recovery would be long, uneven and uncertain. Poor countries have been particularly vulnerable to the effects of the virus; the World Bank estimated in October that the pandemic could push more than 100 million people into extreme poverty this year.On Sunday, the leaders threw their support behind a new framework to provide debt relief for poor countries that have been hit hard by the pandemic and reiterated their commitment to freezing bilateral debt payments through June. More than 40 countries have gained over $5 billion in immediate debt payment relief this year. Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, had already backed the measure, but it was not clear it was on Mr. Trump’s radar.And, after four years of Mr. Trump shaking up the global order on international trade, the communiqué underscored a commitment to the future of the World Trade Organization, expressed support for the “multilateral trading system” and called for a “stable” trade environment and open markets. Although there was no mention of tariffs, the language could be read as a rebuke to Mr. Trump’s penchant for protectionism and trade wars.It was not just the formal language that underscored the rift between European leaders and the outgoing American president. On Saturday, Mr. Trump was not listed as a participant at a sideline event at the conference on pandemic preparedness and response. Speakers at the event included President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. Mr. Trump, however, played golf at his club in Virginia, his fifth day there since the election, whose results he is still contesting despite no evidence to support his claims. Mr. Trump was back at Trump National Golf Club on Sunday afternoon for his sixth tee time.Former Republican advisers criticized the move.During the global financial crisis, “George W. Bush convened the first G20 leaders’ summit to chart the course for repair and reform of the world economy,” said Daniel M. Price, a former adviser to Mr. Bush who was responsible for international trade and investment. “When that forum met yesterday to address the Covid-19 crisis, Donald Trump chose to play golf, underscoring the task facing President-elect Biden to restore the trust and confidence in U.S. leadership so depleted by his predecessor.”In a statement on Sunday afternoon, the White House summarized Mr. Trump’s participation in the weekend summit and seemed to suggest that he would be involved in the G20 next year, when Italy will host.“President Trump thanked Saudi Arabia for its leadership during its G20 presidency and looked forward to working with Italy as incoming G20 president,” Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, said in a statement.Mark Landler contributed reporting from London. More

Donald Trump faced growing pressure from Republicans on Sunday to drop his chaotic, last-ditch fight to overturn the US presidential election, as victor Joe Biden prepared to start naming his cabinet and a Pennsylvania judge compared Trump’s legal case there to “Frankenstein’s monster”.Despite Republican leadership in Washington standing behind the president’s claims that the 3 November election was stolen from him by nationwide voter fraud, other prominent figures, including two of his former national security advisers, were blunt.Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton said that Biden would be sworn in in January and added: “The real question is how much damage Trump can do before that happens.”The president’s efforts were designed mainly to sow chaos and confusion, he told CNN’s State of the Union show, as a demonstration more of “raw political power” than a genuine legal exercise.Bolton noted that the Trump campaign has so far lost all but two of more than 30 legal challenges in various states.“Right now Trump is throwing rocks through windows, he is the political equivalent of a street rioter,” Bolton said.And another former Trump administration national security adviser, HR McMaster, told CBS’s Face the Nation that Trump’s efforts were “very corrosive” and warned that his actions were sowing doubt among the electorate.“It’s playing into the hands of our adversaries,” he said, warning that Russia, for example, “doesn’t care who wins” as long as many Americans doubt the result, undermining US democracy.On Sunday evening, hours after former New Jersey governor and adviser to the president Chris Christie said Trump’s legal team was a “national embarrassment” the campaign issued a statement distancing itself from lawyer Sidney Powell, who has been a prominent figure arguing the Trump case that the election was fraudulent, while positing wild theories but no evidence.Meanwhile, Maryland governor, Larry Hogan, another Republican, said he also was confident Biden would be sworn in on schedule on 20 January and said “I’m embarrassed” at the lack of party leadership speaking out to recognize the election result.Hogan added that he thought Trump’s pressuring last week of state legislators “to somehow try to change the outcome” was “completely outrageous”.The US used to supervise elections around the world but was now “beginning to look like we’re in a banana republic,” Hogan told CNN’s State of the Union politics show.Hogan later tweeted, in response to a critical tweet from Trump, who had gone to the golf course for the second time this weekend: “Stop golfing and concede.”If you had done your job, America’s governors wouldn’t have been forced to fend for themselves to find tests in the middle of a pandemic, as we successfully did in Maryland.Stop golfing and concede. https://t.co/tCXO8etxge— Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) November 22, 2020
On Friday, the president met withRepublican leaders from Michigan at the White House in a wild attempt to sway them and leaders in other battleground states in the electoral college to set aside the will of the people and declare Trump the winner, despite officials at local and federal level declaring it the most secure election in American history.In the latest setback to Trump’s efforts, Matthew Brann, a Republican US district court judge in Pennsylvania, threw out the Trump campaign’s request to disenfranchise almost 7 million voters there.“This claim, like Frankenstein’s Monster, has been haphazardly stitched together from two distinct theories in an attempt to avoid controlling precedent,” he wrote in a damning order, issued on Saturday.It came after similar failed court bids in Georgia, Michigan and Arizona to prevent states from certifying their vote totals.Ruling that Pennsylvania officials can certify election results in the state, where Biden has a lead of more than 80,000 votes, Brann said the Trump campaign presented “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations… unsupported by evidence” in its attempt to challenge a batch of thousands of votes.Brann also suggested that the Trump campaign’s case demonstrated a failure to understand the US constitution, writing: “Plaintiffs seek to remedy the denial of their votes by invalidating the votes of millions of others. Rather than requesting that their votes be counted, they seek to discredit scores of other votes, but only for one race. This is simply not how the constitution works.”For Trump to maintain any hope of staying in the White House, he would need to eliminate Biden’s 81,000-vote lead in Pennsylvania. The state is due to start certifying its results on Monday – as is Michigan.Kristen Clarke, president of the lawyers’ committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said of the Pennsylvania result and forthcoming result certification: “This should put the nail in the coffin on any further attempts by President Trump to use the federal courts to rewrite the outcome of the 2020 election.”On Sunday afternoon, the Trump campaign filed an appeal against Brann’s ruling in Pennsylvania.But Christie agreed that it was time for the president to concede and said the legal team fighting to overturn the election was “a national embarrassment”.Last week, lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell represented the Trump campaign in court and held a long press conference side by side at the Republican National Committee headquarters that was characterized by lies and wild claims about a fraudulent election, without presenting credible evidence.Then the Trump election campaign abruptly issued a statement on Powell.“Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own,” Trump campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said in the Sunday evening statement. “She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.”Powell recently represented Michael Flynn, who was briefly Trump’s national security adviser before he was fired and prosecuted, in his tangled criminal case.Biden has garnered the most votes of a presidential winner in history, recording 6 million more votes than Trump. More

US president-elect Joe Biden will announce the first names chosen for his cabinet on Tuesday, the incoming White House chief of staff said – and is expecting a scaled-down inauguration celebration because of the risks of spreading coronavirus.In a sign that his transition team is pressing ahead swiftly – despite Donald Trump’s failure to concede the election and ongoing attempts to thwart the transition process – Ron Klain said on Sunday that the appointments were moving at a faster pace than the previous two administrations.“You’re going to see the first cabinet picks this Tuesday. But if you want to know what cabinet agencies they are, who’s going to be in those cabinet agencies, you’ll have to wait for the president-elect to say that himself on Tuesday,” he told ABC.Antony Blinken, a career diplomat who served as No 2 at the state department and as deputy national security adviser in the Obama administration, was Biden’s most likely pick to be secretary of state, according to reports on Sunday night by the New York Times and Reuters.It comes after Biden said on Thursday that he had already chosen his treasury secretary, hinting only that it is somebody who will be “accepted by all elements of the Democratic party”.Klain said that while parts of the transition are moving at “record setting pace”, there are limits to what the Biden team can do while the current administration continues to attempt to block the transition, the impacts of which “escalate every day”.He said Biden and vice-president-elect Kamala Harris are not getting access to intelligence briefings, coronavirus data or background checks for cabinet nominees and criticised US general services administration (GSA) administrator Emily Murphy, who has delayed ascertaining Biden’s win.“The law only requires her to find who is the apparent victor of the election and I can’t imagine there’s any dispute that Joe Biden is the apparent winner of the presidential election.”Klain said the president “has definitely set back the democratic norm here in the United States. He’s been doing that for four years and that’s ramped up since the election.”Asked about how the incoming administration plans to balance moving forward with holding the previous one accountable, he said the president-elect “is not going to tell the justice department who to investigate or who not to investigate.” On inauguration day, 20 January, the incoming president normally enjoys being received by the outgoing president at the White House, followed by the swearing-in in front of the Capitol, watched by the public on the National Mall and millions on television. There’s a special launch, a procession down Pennsylvania Avenue and the inaugural balls.Everything about Joe Biden’s celebrations are expected to be different in January, because of the ongoing pandemic.“We know people want to celebrate … we just want to try to find a way to do it as safely as possible,” Klain said.There is speculation that Trump will not participate at all.And that some events could be cancelled or will involve social distancing and mask-wearing with many obliged to watch an online stream instead of attend in person. More

The threats our nation faces today are complex and interrelated — cyberattacks that seek to undermine our elections; violent extremism and white nationalism; the proliferation of nuclear weapons and loose nuclear material; extreme weather disasters made worse by climate change; and a public health emergency that has killed over 250,000 Americans.A chaotic transition from the Trump administration to a Biden administration will make responding to these threats and challenges harder. What’s needed now is cross-partisan cooperation to ensure a smooth and orderly transfer of power. Our national security depends on it.Twenty years ago, the presidential transition was truncated, to disastrous results. We know firsthand the national security risks posed by a botched transition: We’re two former members of the 9/11 Commission — one of us the Republican former governor of New Jersey who led the commission, and the other a former Democratic congressman from Indiana who served on it.Three and a half years after the 2000 election came to an end, the 9/11 Commission released its official report on the events leading up to the worst terrorist attack in American history. “The dispute over the election and the 36-day delay [between Election Day and the day in mid-December when the Republican, George W. Bush, was ultimately declared the winner] cut in half the normal transition period,” the report detailed, “hamper[ing] the new administration in identifying, recruiting, clearing, and obtaining Senate confirmation of key appointees,” which left our country more vulnerable to attack.Together, along with eight others in a bipartisan group of commissioners, we worked to understand the circumstances that led to the attacks, and to provide recommendations to guard against future ones. We understood then what should be evident now: Matters of national security must transcend domestic political division. Today, as our country faces vast foreign and domestic risks, President-elect Joe Biden’s transition must be treated not as an exercise in politics but as the security imperative it is.More than two weeks have passed since the 2020 presidential race was called in Mr. Biden’s favor, and the president-elect has still not received official intelligence briefings. Even during the mismanaged transition in 2000, Mr. Bush was still given the full daily intelligence briefing. What’s more, Mr. Biden’s transition team has been denied access to federal agencies, transition funds, office space and classified information. Perhaps most alarmingly, the president-elect has not yet been able to begin government background checks on key national security appointees, which could stall appointments, putting American national security at risk.Eight years after winning his contested election, and seven years after 9/11, Mr. Bush offered the gold standard of transitions to then President-elect Barack Obama, heeding recommendations from our report and allowing Mr. Obama’s national security picks to begin obtaining security clearances right after Election Day. This readied the Senate to consider appointments, and it provided the president-elect with a “classified, compartmented list that catalogues specific, operational threats to national security; major military or covert operations; and pending decisions on the possible use of force.”Today, many experts — Democrat and Republican — are sounding the alarm about the current state of transition. On Nov. 12, a group of over 150 former national security officials issued a letter warning that “delaying the transition further poses a serious risk to our national security.”An orderly presidential transition is needed to keep America secure. We must learn from past mistakes. We implore the Trump administration to remember this imperative now. All Americans should be united in protecting our citizens from the clear and present dangers in the world today.Thomas Kean, a Republican, is the former governor of New Jersey and chairman of the 9/11 Commission. Tim Roemer, a Democrat, is a former congressman from Indiana, U.S. ambassador to India and member of the 9/11 Commission.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

G20 leaders meeting remotely pledged on Sunday to “spare no effort” to ensure the fair distribution of coronavirus vaccines worldwide, but offered no specific new funding to meet that goal. The virtual summit hosted by Saudi Arabia was an awkward swan song for Donald Trump, who skipped some sessions on Saturday to play golf, paid little attention to other leaders’ speeches and claimed the Paris climate agreement was designed not to save the planet but to the kill the US economy.Joe Biden has promised to rejoin the accord on day one of his presidency, giving other world leaders hope that the UN climate change conference at the end of next year will see more ambitious pledges, including from China, to cut carbon emissions by 2050.Trump’s isolationist diplomacy has allowed China to escape some scrutiny both on its climate and debt forgiveness measures. “To protect American workers, I withdrew the country from the unjust Paris agreement,” Trump told the G20. “I refuse to surrender millions of American jobs and send trillions of American dollars to the world’s worst polluters and environmental offenders, and that’s what would have happened.”The bulk of the summit focused on ensuring that the coronavirus vaccines expected to hit the market imminently are available for distribution at affordable prices in poorer countries.The EU and the UN say there is a £4.5bn funding shortfall this year that the G20 nations should fill. Countries have so far invested $10bn in the Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator and its vaccine pillar, the Covax Facility. The two schemes are designed to ensure the vaccines do not remain the preserve of the wealthiest economies.The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said: “The recent breakthroughs on Covid-19 vaccines offer a ray of hope. But that ray of hope needs to reach everyone. That means ensuring that vaccines are treated as a global public good, a people’s vaccine accessible and affordable to everyone, everywhere,” he said.“This is not a ‘do-good’ exercise. It is the only way to stop the pandemic dead in its tracks. Solidarity is indeed survival.”The final G20 communique simply said: “We have mobilised resources to address the immediate financing needs in global health to support the research, development, manufacturing and distribution of safe and effective Covid-19 diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.“We will spare no effort to ensure their affordable and equitable access for all people, consistent with members’ commitments to incentivise innovation.” It gave no supporting evidence or statistics.In a sign of the competition for access to vaccines and national prestige, Russia said its Sputnik V would be much cheaper than those offered by Pfizer and Moderna. More

He’s back with a vengeance. After four years lying low as Donald Trump occupied the White House, Barack Obama is suddenly everywhere again – on TV, on radio, online and in bookshops.
The 44th US president’s memoir, A Promised Land, was published this week and, shifting nearly 890,000 copies in its first 24 hours, is likely to become the bestselling presidential memoir in modern American history. It topped his wife Michelle Obama’s book, Becoming, which sold 725,000 copies on day one.
As he promotes the 768-page tome, Obama is being asked what influence he and his allies may wield when his former deputy, Joe Biden, assumes the presidency in January. It is a double-edged sword. Biden knows that he will always be able to call on his old boss for advice – but he has big shoes to fill and could suffer by comparison.
“I’m certain Barack would be happy to react to any question or request Biden put to him,” said David Garrow, author of Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama. “But I wonder, having spent eight years as VP [vice-president], whether Biden would hesitate to rely on Barack in any meaningful way because of a feeling that it would be like relying on your older brother.” More

Joe Biden has vowed to make his administration the most diverse in American history with an array of people and political viewpoints in a party that has deep divisions. But so far the president-elect has made clear that prioritizes his own viewpoint.The former vice-president and incoming president is yet to announce his picks for various major cabinet agencies, but he has unveiled a big portion of his senior staff so far, and that batch of incoming top staffers are largely the gang of advisers Biden has kept close to him for years.That’s important because Biden’s picks for his administration are one of his most powerful tools for healing some of the fractures between the Democrats’ leftist and centrist wings and for guiding the party’s path forwards at a time of national crisis in the wake of the Trump era and the coronavirus pandemic.During a press conference on Thursday afternoon Biden offered a few hints of who he will nominate for treasury secretary – one of the most important offices he will fill. “It’s someone who will be accepted by all elements of the Democratic party, from progressive to moderate,” Biden said.That comment in itself narrowed the list of high-profile possibilities. It is unlikely to be a rock-the-boat selection like leftwing Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who would probably spark anxiety among the business community, or someone like JP Morgan Chase’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, a hypothetical candidate who would infuriate progressives.In other words Biden is showing that while he wants to have an inclusive administration, he’s also eager to take a somewhat middle-of-the-road approach as he navigates the party’s bickering factions.Similarly, Biden has decided so far to fill his White House senior staff with longtime advisers who are largely inoffensive to disparate wings of the Democratic party. He has appointed Ron Klain, his chief of staff while vice-president, to the same role as president. Jenn O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s general election campaign manager, will be deputy chief of staff. Mike Donilon, who served as counselor to Biden as vice-president, will reprise the same title at the White House. Steve Ricchetti, another former chief of staff to Biden, will be a counselor as well. Biden also picked the Louisiana congressman Cedric Richmond, his former campaign co-chairman, as a senior adviser. More