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The worst ideas on the progressives' policy and personnel wish lists including government competing head-to-head with the private sector will be shelved," said Peter Freeman, a principal at FS Vector and a former House Republican aide.

Cliff Roberti, co-founder of Federal Hall Policy Advisors and a onetime House Republican staffer, said a Biden White House and Republican-controlled Senate would be a net positive for the financial services industry especially given pre-election expectations.

Those expectations of a Democratic victory were stoked by polls and financial contributions that indicated the party had a big edge heading into Election Day. But many of the candidates underperformed in battleground states and control of the Senate may remain in flux until early January, when both of Georgia's Senate races are apparently headed for runoff elections.

No matter who wins a majority in the upper chamber, banks and other financial firms still face headaches over Bidens ability to appoint new leaders to federal agencies. But even here he may opt to name more moderates to those posts to avoid confrontations if the GOP takes the Senate, lobbyists said.

Bankers will be in better stead with more stability on the congressional side if Republicans maintain Senate control, said Paul Merski, vice president of the Independent Community Bankers of America. You wont have dramatic shifts in banking policy. The real change may be how you address the regulatory agencies and the Senate could have an influence on that as well.

Progressive groups are so alarmed that they're urging Biden to use every option to sidestep potential GOP obstruction of his nominees. One tool is the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which allows a president to elevate existing government employees and Senate-confirmed officials to lead agencies.

"From those strategic perches, Biden can reverse much of Trump's unpopular deregulatory rampage," said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project.

But most significant legislation would probably not get very far.

All those bills the House has passed over the years waiting for a Democratic Senate may or may not come to fruition, Consumer Bankers Association President and CEO Richard Hunt said.

Since winning control of the House in 2018, Democrats have passed new safeguards for consumer credit reporting and proposed a nationwide cap on interest rates for loans. Those would likely be impossible to enact as law with a Republican Senate, as would Democratic proposals to expand banking services offered by the Postal Service and to create a public credit reporting agency.

The biggest unknown would be the extent to which Senate Republicans would go along with economic relief that Biden and the Democrats as well as Wall Street executives and investors say is desperately needed on a massive scale amid a resurgent coronavirus.

A smaller-scale stimulus bill would be a loss to banks and other financial firms that stood to benefit. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) kept hope alive Wednesday, saying he believes a rescue plan was necessary and needed to be finished by the end of the year.

A stimulus package is still possible, maybe probable, but it will likely be a smaller deal than in a blue wave scenario, Stifel Chief Washington Policy Strategist Brian Gardner told clients in a report Wednesday, when a GOP Senate looked like a strong possibility. We think it will be under $2 trillion, which could disappoint investors.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been pushing for a package of more than $2 trillion, while McConnell has warned that many Republicans will not support a bill that exceeds $1 trillion. While President Donald Trump has sent mixed signals about how much stimulus he favors, Biden has pressed for a new round of substantial aid.

But after that, lobbyists say financial firms should feel relieved.

Biden has pledged to increase the corporate tax rate, raise levies on wealthy individuals and increase capital gains taxes from levels long enjoyed by private equity investors. Those are off the table if the Senate stays in Republican control.

A "Blue Wave" was also expected to unleash layers of new regulations and scrutiny sought by Democrats, as well as progressive-leaning watchdogs that Biden may have nominated for key financial posts, but now all that would face stiff opposition if Republicans keep the Senate. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), one of Wall Street's biggest critics in Congress, has been pushing to be named Treasury secretary if Biden wins. Bernie Sanders wants to be Labor secretary.

But even without help from Congress, his regulators could move ahead with plans to scrutinize banks for climate change risk and to rewrite anti-redlining rules. How far they go depends on whom Biden hires.

Biden wouldnt need to worry about the Senate confirmation process when it comes to naming temporary leaders of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a powerful independent agency set up by Warren, or the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks. The former vice president could appoint new heads of those agencies on an acting basis soon after his inauguration and take time securing Senate confirmation for more-permanent replacements.

He would not be able to immediately replace the heads of the Federal Reserve or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., unless they stepped down, but Democrats could quickly ascend to acting leadership roles at the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Biden's Treasury secretary would lead the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which consists of top regulators across government and was set up after the 2008 financial crisis.

The risk of harmful legislative changes is considerably diminished, and a Republican Senate will provide an important counterbalance to an aggressive regulatory agenda, Roberti said. With that being said, significant regulatory risk will remain for the industry particularly for financial institutions and other heavily regulated sectors.

Biden-picked officials could enact rules to rein in CEO pay and also expand disclosure of corporations' climate-related and political spending activities, said Lisa Gilbert, vice president of legislative affairs for Public Citizen. Graham Steele, a former Senate aide who now directs the Corporations and Society Initiative at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, outlined in the American Prospect last year sweeping steps agencies can take on their own, including capping the size of big banks and cracking down on private equity management fees.

Isaac Boltansky, policy research director for Compass Point Research & Trading, said the combination of Biden and a GOP Senate would benefit the financial industry.

"With the Red Wave off the table, this was the best possible outcome for banks as it effectively takes tax increases off the table and it should foster a renewed sense of structural stability that has been absent in recent years," he said.

"There are broader concerns including the arc of the recovery without sizable stimulus but at least for today, a steady tax code, some fiscal support and a stable macro backdrop is a win for banks."

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Bankers, fearing Democrats' 'worst ideas,' unite in support of divided government - POLITICO

Democrats went into election night anxious, hoping for an opposite result than on election night 2016.

Hours after the first polls closed, they are feeling an overwhelming sense of dj vu as President TrumpDonald John TrumpBiden claims a 'mandate' to govern, calls for end to 'partisan warfare' Mark Meadows tests positive for coronavirus Georgia Senate race between Perdue, Ossoff heads to runoff MORE builds leads in the South and Democrat Joe BidenJoe BidenBiden claims a 'mandate' to govern, calls for end to 'partisan warfare' Mark Meadows tests positive for coronavirus Trump supporters scream at Telemundo reporter during live broadcast from Maricopa ballot center MOREs hopes fall largely on the same states that doomed Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonSantorum urges giving Trump time to accept defeat: 'This is a very emotional time' Stacey Abrams earns praise as Biden leads in Georgia Nevada Democrat Steven Horsford wins reelection MORE four years ago: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Many Democrats went into the evening cautiously optimistic that Biden could defeat Trump. The most hopeful operatives had their eyes on a landslide.

Those hopes began evaporating as Trump built a lead in Florida, and as The New York Times needles showed the president overwhelmingly likely to win not only the Sunshine State, but North Carolina and Georgia as well.

House later, none of those states have been called, but Trump is in the lead in all three. Trump also leads in Texas, another state Democrats dreamed of winning.

I feel the exact same way I felt in 2016: nauseous, said one former Obama administration official. It feels the same.

Another Democratic strategist summed it up this way: Its catastrophic.

This is so much worse than 2016. In 2016, we were surprised. In 2020, we supposedly learned our lesson, the strategist said. And we didn't.

The strategist and other Democrats pointed to Trump's dizzying schedule in recent days where he held multiple events, and they were quick to lay blame at Biden's strategy of trying to play in red states like Georgia and Texas.

At the same time, Biden allies cautioned that it was still early in the night.

Democrats are feeling optimistic that Biden will flip Arizona, where he has built a lead in the populous Maricopa County.

Counts in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the so-called blue wall that Biden had vowed to rebuild, are ongoing. Counts could go on not only for a number of hours in all three states, but perhaps days, particularly in Pennsylvania.

We still have a path, one Biden ally said. We all need to calm down.

Democratic strategist Eddie Vale also said he felt like it was too soon to draw comparisons to 2016.

I could eat these words, but I think people are over panicking on our side a little, he said.

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For panicking Democrats, 2020 is dj vu all over again | TheHill - The Hill

Joe Biden is inching his way toward a win, but Congress is on track to be more divided than ever. POLITICO's Dan Diamond explains how the coronavirus pandemic split the nation and how polarized views of President Trump's response shaped results up and down the ballot.

Here is an uncomfortable reality for Obama and anyone who agreed with his words. Trump is on track to grow his popular vote total by millions of people, not one of whom could have been under any illusions about what they were voting for. Unlike 2016, there is no way to dismiss this as a flukish accident of democracy, or an illegitimate manipulation of democracy. His support was a robust expression of democracy.

More discomfort: This was a bravura political achievement. Strip itjust for a moment onlyfrom moral context, from the fact that crowded, maskless rallies during a pandemic are flagrantly irresponsible, that many of his words were remorselessly demagogic. In the midst of the coronavirus catastrophe, just weeks after that virus left him in the hospital needing supplemental oxygen, in the face of bad polls and mostly hostile news coverage, Trump raced across the country and came close to winning. He is a movement politician who, with his back to the wall, often demonstrates remarkable moves.

It is not possible, of course, to separate Trumps political performance from moral context. The argument of the past four years hasnt been about, say, marginal tax rates in which people may accuse their opponents of greed but in the end can easily split the difference. Its not even like arguments about abortion rights, in which the differences arent easily split and the different sides often view each other with mutual incomprehension. But even in that case, adversaries are in violent opposition to each others views, not in violent opposition to the body of institutions, rules and prevailing ethical customs that cumulatively create a democratic culture.

Trump is in opposition to that. There are hundreds of examples but no need to dig through the archives. His overnight appearance at the White House early Wednesday was a fine example. He alleged fraud without evidence and asserted, with millions of votes in key states still not counted, Frankly, we did win this election.

The origins of Trumps appeal stretch back decades, in the long-term decline of trust in most American institutions, from government, to Big Business, to the media. In recent years, in part through purposeful political marketing in which politicians and media figures on both ends of the ideological spectrum reap lavish rewards of publicity and money for extreme politics, mistrust has been refined into pure contempt. It was this environment that made Trump possible, and in which he prospered.

But a narrow victory for either side does not fundamentally alter the countrys political balance. This means that the environment that produced Trump-style politics will continue even if Trump is not president. It also means that the opposition party to any president will in many circumstances perceive implacable opposition as being in their interest. In such a dynamic it is better to keep policy disputes as weapons and shields in the ongoing ideological and partisan war than it is to resolve them.

For four years, Democrats have been caught in what might be thought of as the contempt conundrum. The only principled response to Trumps shredding of norms and defiance of accountability is steadfast opposition. This, at times, can goad them into the same politics of insult and indignation in which Trump thrives. It was no accident that the opportunity to register a verdict on the Trump years inspired surges of new voting on both sides of the question.

The conditions that created Trump will end only when one party or the other achieves a decisive advantage with voters that carries them to unchallenged majority status across Washington and deep into the states. Democrats thought this might be the year that happened. Some 67 million Trump votersseveral million less than Biden won but several million more than Trump got four years agosaid not so fast.

When Democrats ask Trump voters What is your problem? it is another way of asking themselves, What is our problem?

Excerpt from:
Democrats Look at Trump Voters and Wonder, What the Hell Is Your Problem? - POLITICO

I dont see Democrats putting anything forward as a plan other than orange-man bad, said Vinny Papa, 54, who works as a parts manager at a car dealership in Suffolk County.

Mr. Papa, an independent voter who said he has voted for both Democrats and Republicans, said he is not a big Trump supporter, but voted for Mr. Trump because Republicans are bad, and the Democrats are a hundred times worse.

Dana Gencarelli, 35, a mother of two young children, said that she was happy with Ms. Malliotakiss lead because her top concern was public safety, a priority she said Mr. Rose did not share.

Do I always feel Republicans are doing the right thing? No, she said, as she had pizza with family outside of Leos in Bay Ridge. But right now the Democrats arent doing the right thing.

Still others, including Cameron Lory Faulds, a Bay Ridge resident who has voted for both parties in the past, voted for the entire Democratic ticket, including Joseph R. Biden Jr. as did her husband, who is a registered Republican. Her social views, she said, were key in her choice of candidates.

Im not voting for Trumps enablers, she said standing by a yard sign outside her home that read: Im a Republican but not a fool! Biden 2020.

In many cases, however, voters appeared jaded by an election cycle that devolved into one of the most bruising and divisive in recent memory. With the outcome of the election still uncertain, some voters preferred not to express their political views or say who they had voted for.

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How Defund the Police Roiled Competitive Races in New York - The New York Times

Democrats are encouraging Rep. Tony Crdenas (D-Calif.) to drop out of the race for assistant Speaker and run to lead the House Democrats 2022 campaign operation following a disappointing election night for the party, multiple sources told The Hill.

I think Tony would have a lot of support for DCCC. Maybe not automatic but a very clean shot," Rep. Filemon VelaFilemon Bartolome VelaDemocrats try to draft Cardenas to run campaign arm after disappointing night Hispanic Caucus asks for Department of Labor meeting on COVID in meatpacking plants The Hill's Campaign Report: Biden builds big lead in battleground Florida MORE (D-Texas), a close friend and fellow Hispanic Caucus member, said in an interview Thursday, referring to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Current DCCC Chairwoman Cheri BustosCheryl (Cheri) Lea BustosDemocrats' post-election 'family meeting' descends into chaos Democrats try to draft Cardenas to run campaign arm after disappointing night The Hill's 12:30 Report: How to read the battleground votes trickling in MORE (D-Ill.) has not said whether shell seek a second term leading the campaign arm. Shes focused on getting every vote counted in a number of close House races across the country that havent been called yet, DCCC spokesman Cole Leiter said.

Election night proved to be a huge disappointment for Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiBiden claims a 'mandate' to govern, calls for end to 'partisan warfare' Election scrambles prospects for next COVID-19 relief bill Overnight Health Care: Election results underscore different views on coronavirus | What could a Biden administration do on health care? | Battle lines form over coronavirus fight in lame duck MORE (D-Calif.), Bustos and their fellow House Democrats. Bolstered by positive polling and record fundraising, they had hoped to pick up anywhere from five to 15 seats, winning districts deep in Trump country. Instead, they watched as at least seven vulnerable members went down to defeat and are now on track to have a net loss of seats.

Many Democrats said they dont envision Bustos, a centrist, leading the DCCC after Tuesday nights results, particularly as her own district's politics become more complicated and she is forced to focus more energy on defending her own seat in western Illinois. The Associated Press on Thursday projected Bustos, who was leading her GOP challenger 52 percent to 48 percent, would win her race.

"What got under members' skin is the fact that she had to get bailed out. Why did we spend $1 million to bail out the DCCC chair? That's the bur under their saddle,"a former Democratic leadership aide said of Democratic super PAC spending in the race. "If this was a bad cycle for her, imagine 2022."

Crdenas, 57, is currently locked in a three-way race to replace the assistant Speaker, Rep. Ben Ray Lujn, a former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) who won an open Senate seat in New Mexico on Tuesday night. The California Democrat is running against Rep. Katherine ClarkKatherine Marlea ClarkDemocrats try to draft Cardenas to run campaign arm after disappointing night Pocan won't seek another term as Progressive Caucus co-chair Democratic leaders: Supreme Court fight is about ObamaCare MORE (D-Mass.), the vice chairwoman of the Democratic caucus; and Rep. David CicillineDavid Nicola CicillineCivil Rights group, watchdog formally request Twitter suspend Trump's account over disinformation Democrats try to draft Cardenas to run campaign arm after disappointing night Justice Department charges Google with illegally maintaining search monopoly MORE (D-R.I.), who heads up the partys messaging arm known as the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.

But the DCCC job could be a better fit for Crdenas, one of the Congressional Hispanic Caucuss leaders and a prolific fundraiser, some Democrats say.

At the campaign organization, the former Los Angeles city councilman would follow in the steps of Lujn, who engineered the 2018 Democratic sweep that gave the party the House majority. Some party insiders and members were initially miffed at Bustos for putting her imprint on the job, rather than just building on Lujn's work.

Crdenas is currently chairman of Bold PAC, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) campaign arm, a post that Lujn had previously held.

Bold PAC was a relatively minor operation before Lujn, mostly focused on supporting CHC incumbents in tough races. Lujn overhauled the operation in the 2014 campaign cycle, Bold PAC raised nearly $1 million, twice what it raised two cycles prior.

But Crdenas changed the face of Bold PAC entirely, raising more than $6 million for 2016, $11 million for 2018 and more than $13 million for 2020, and expanding the group's reach to support vulnerable members beyond the CHC.

Democrats who are wary of the 2020 House results see Crdenas's job at Bold PAC as a supercharged version of Lujn's role there, and hope that could translate to a DCCC expected to face a huge challenge in protecting its majority in what almost certainly will be a difficult midterm election for Democrats.

Crdenas is the name that keeps coming up by members [who think] he would be the right guy because of what he's done with Bold PAC, the former Democratic aide said.

Democrats are especially concerned about lost ground with Hispanic voters in areas like the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where Hispanic support for Republicans grew aggressively in 2020.

Democrats were also caught off guard in two key Miami-Dade seats poached by Republicans, where Trump's consistent messaging on Latin American socialism essentially erased gains Democrats had made among South Florida Hispanics, particularly the powerful Cuban American voting bloc.

House campaigns throughout the country also suffered because favorite tactics door knocking and in-person get out the vote efforts were discarded by Democrats in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Many Democrats view Crdenas, an advocate of the early-and-often approach to Hispanic outreach used in 2018, as uniquely poised to bring back that strategy.

Bustos, who early in her DCCC tenure was criticized for a lack of diversity in her leadership team, has said she runs the committee with a mindset of permanent engagement with voters, responding to criticism that minority voters are approached late in each cycle.

But the shock of a disappointing 2020 House election, plus concerns about Bustos's own job security amid impending redistricting, have Democrats calling Crdenas en masse to consider the campaign job.

Whether that's enough for Crdenas to mount a challenge against Bustos remains to be seen.

Crdenas, who has made no secret of his leadership ambitions, said earlier in the summer that he did not challenge Bustos out of respect, and decided to go for the assistant speakership.

Crdenas considers Bustos a friend and is unlikely to formally announce any designs on the DCCC role unless Bustos steps aside, sources said.

The former Democratic leadership aide said there's a group of members actively trying to recruit Crdenas for DCCC chair, though this source said there's been no indication that Crdenas is ready to make a jump.

"I haven't heard that Crdenas is moving. I know that members are trying to convince him that he should get into that race," the former aide said Thursday by phone, adding that many members are waiting to hear Bustos's side before outright calling for her ouster.

While a number of outstanding races remain to be called, there's already grumbling from a number of moderate Democrats that leadership botched the party's campaign message. Some have called for a leadership shake-up from Pelosi down, though the former leadership aide said those voices represent a small, if restless, minority.

"There's the usual rumbling, but I don't know if anyone's going to be willing to say, 'Hey, we need new leadership top to bottom.' I haven't heard that part," the source said. "I have heard that Bustos is sort-of the center of their energy right now."

Updated: 10:10 p.m.

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Democrats try to draft Cardenas to run campaign arm after disappointing night | TheHill - The Hill