Budowsky: Biden should pull together a ‘dream team of rivals’

I have a dream, which can come true.

Former Vice President Joe Biden can seize the mantle of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and run a campaign, and design a presidency, that is the ultimate team of rivals that wins a realigning landslide and ends the presidency of Donald Trump.

With Biden’s powerful, stirring and electrifying performances in the South Carolina and Super Tuesday primaries —  and the decision of most of his major primary opponents to withdraw from the campaign and endorse him — the stage is set for Biden to begin major moves to unite the party and nation and win a historic realigning victory in November.

At a defining moment in the history of our bitterly divided nation, currently led by a bitterly divisive president who has frightening authoritarian tendencies that would become dangerous to the Republic if he is reelected to a second term, the Democrats have an extraordinary opportunity to win the presidential, House and Senate elections in November.

The moment is golden for Biden to think big, reach high and act boldly to bring all of his former opponents into the heart of his planning for his campaign, and his presidency if he is elected.

Biden can build a dream team of rivals, beginning today, that would ultimately include former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), businessman Tom Steyer, and Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Those who have already endorsed Biden, and Warren and Sanders if they choose, could immediately be part of an aggressive and dramatic campaign to maintain and expand Democratic control of the House of Representatives and regain control of the Senate.

If Biden is nominated and elected, every one of his former opponents in this dream team of rivals can be brought into the center of planning for his new administration, to develop bold plans for dramatic reforms and initiatives that can be executed and implemented in his first 100 days and first year.

Like FDR, Biden and his Democratic dream team of former rivals would have a real chance of winning a realigning election in November. Like FDR, they can develop comprehensive plans to address great issues from income equality to making Medicare available to all who want it, from a landmark and transcendent campaign to end the scourge of climate change to permanently protecting the Dreamers and enacting major immigration reform, and from providing relief to those enduring the pain of student loans to restoring America as leader for human rights and the alliance of democratic nations.

Biden and his former rivals are rock solid united in strong opposition to Trump’s policies on these issues. Equally important they are mostly in agreement with each other on these issues, and together could enact dramatic changes that would make FDR proud of Democrats today.

What made FDR special was that he won a realigning landslide with a big tent politics uniting diverse Democrats, and enacted sweeping changes of the kind Democrats can unite behind today.

For example:

Mike Bloomberg can play an enormous role helping to elect Democrats with massive campaign donations and — this is critically important — playing a historic role with a President Biden mobilizing a worldwide battle against climate change and demonstrating his executive brilliance helping to manage dangerous crises such as a possible deadly coronavirus pandemic.

Elizabeth Warren could become a modern-day Frances Perkins, the greatest Secretary of Labor in history who brilliantly served FDR for 12 years constructing core New Deal programs. Working closely with a President Biden, she could help enact into law many of the plans she proposed during the campaign.

With a Biden dream team of rivals, the sky is the limit for the magnitude of the landslide that can be won against Trump, and the magnitude of history that can be made during the post Trump years.

Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), who was chief deputy majority whip of the House of Representatives. He holds an LLM in international financial law from the London School of Economics.