Washington is returning hour by hour to its usual rhythm after the US elections. Traffic is returning to normal and the presence of police forces is increasingly discreet.

Attention now turns to the steps to be taken the day after Donald Trump’s victory – and the truth is, there are many. Camala Harris may have congratulated the former president on his re-election, but the Democratic Party is entering a spin cycle. At the same time, the key issue now is in the smooth transition of power from the Biden administration to that of Trump.

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Admission of defeat by Kamala Harris

The vice president of the United States after a 20-hour delay was finally at Howard University. She refused to take the podium on Tuesday night, November 5, after watching the results, in an attempt to buy time in terms of communicating the defeat. And it’s true, it had barely crossed her staff’s mind that she might not be the one in the Oval Office from January 20 onward.

On Wednesday afternoon, having finally communicated and congratulated Donald Trump on his victory, she addressed the small audience this time at Howard University with a unifying speech, urging her supporters to accept defeat, which she said is part of the democratic process.

On the other hand, she unleashed her arrows at the president-elect, without naming him directly, accusing him of authoritarianism and monarchical behavior. The reason, she said, was that the Democrats would respect the process and make sure there was a smooth transition of power. Anything else, he said, points to authoritarianism, “pointing” to Donald Trump’s behavior after his defeat in the 2020 election when he refused to acknowledge the result, resulting in the deep trauma in the psyche of American society, the riots and the invasion of his supporters on Capitol Hill.

One thing, however, that has been commented on in Washington journalism circles is the fact that Kamala Harris did not say a word in her speech about what may have gone wrong in this campaign. Accordingly, she did not make it clear that she “heard” the message of the ballot box, making only a reference to the fact that her supporters should continue the fight to “make the country better.”

Introversion and blame game among Democrats

The question of what might have gone wrong was the impetus for the leak from Democrats, earlier Wednesday, which said the main culprit for the defeat was Joe Biden. The outgoing president, Kamala’s staffers attributed to his “insistence” on not withdrawing from the race for the presidency at least six to eight months ago, when the effects of his fatigue had begun to squeeze Democratic ratings.

At the same time, however, as protothema.gr is in a position to know, one of the key responsibilities that Kamala Harris will have to face shortly, at least internally, is her inability, ultimately, to cut herself off rhetorically from Joe Biden.
Interestingly, a summary of events from a member of her staff who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Harris displayed the image of a person who promised to get into the White House to change what was wrong during the time that … she was in the White House.

Trump got it all

The magnitude of the Democratic Party’s defeat is not reflected either by the difference in electoral votes Donald Trump garnered or even by the fact that he won the popular vote for the first time. The House of Representatives and the Senate are now controlled by the Republican Party, giving the new president free rein to implement the model of governance he envisions and failed to achieve last time.

By the time these words were written, the Republicans had 204 seats in the House of Representatives to the Democrats’ 187. It was a similar picture in the Senate, with Republicans electing 52 to 44.

This time he will have one more reason to do so, as the human geography of his corps allows it, since the difference from 2016 is that now the Republicans who opposed him have either retired or failed to get elected, leaving Donald Trump supporters to do so.

“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Trump told an ecstatic crowd in West Palm Beach, Florida, even before he had gathered 270 electoral votes. The phrase sums up his approach to a second term: ‘I will govern with a simple slogan: Promises made, promises kept.”

Figures that once hoped to serve as stabilizing forces – including a series of chiefs of staff, defense secretaries, a national security adviser, a national intelligence adviser, and an attorney general – have deserted Trump, leaving behind recriminations about his character and abilities.

They have been replaced by a cabal of advisers and officials uninterested in keeping Trump in check. Rather than acting as institutional mounds, those working for Trump this timeshare his views and are determined to maintain the extreme promises he made as a candidate, with no concern for the institutions, traditions, or laws that previous staffers tried to preserve.

Because he is – already – causing obstacles to a smooth transition

Meanwhile, as US media report, Donald Trump has already begun to show obstacles to the transition of power. His staff – at his behest – has bypassed the contractual transition process and has refused to sign ethics agreements that would allow his campaign to begin working with the Biden administration on the handover, a process that typically begins six months before an election.

The delay is due to Trump’s deep distrust of federal agencies, certainly those not run by his own loyalists. By avoiding signing the agreements, Trump’s team is not disclosing the financiers of the transition and is not bound by specific ethics rules. However, this path excludes his team from national security briefings and millions of dollars earmarked to support the transition process.

The delay in finalizing these agreements has led to key deadlines being missed, preventing Trump’s associates from obtaining the necessary security clearances. Some have considered conducting security clearance procedures on their own, independent of the FBI.

This unusual tactic raises concerns about the preparation and security of an eventual Trump administration, as it bypasses established procedures designed to ensure a smooth and secure transfer of power.