WASHINGTON — Now comes the hard part.
Following Joe Biden's drawn-out and hard-fought victory over President Donald Trump, he will immediately face pressure from the left and right about his proposed agenda and the roster of personnel he'll surround himself with as he prepares to govern a bitterly divided country.
While he garnered nearly 4 million more votes than the president and captured at least 284 electoral votes, according to The Associated Press, his razor-thin margins in nearly every battleground state — along with the prospect of a Republican-controlled Senate and diminished Democratic majority in the House — may alter his best-laid plans for a transformational presidency.
One thing is for sure: Nobody expects Biden or the party to have much of a honeymoon, even after a victory that ousted an incumbent president for the first time since 1992.
"He's going to be handed a failing economy, a global pandemic without a federal response. He's going to be handed pretty much the worst situation that you could imagine on multiple fronts," said Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, the outgoing chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "It's going to be an awful lot that you have to fix before you even start to govern."
And aside from historic crises and a potentially divided government, they'll also have to overcome simple burnout from an activist class who have worked tirelessly the last four years and, with Trump defeated, might be ready for rest.
"The first thing we have to deal with is exhaustion and fatigue," said Amanda Litman, the co-founder of the progressive grassroots group Run for Something. "People are and are going to be tired of politics, tired of participating."
Even before the drama of this hard-fought drawn-out election unfolded, where ballots are still being counted across the country and lawsuits from the Trump campaign are in the works, the lines for the first battlefront had been forming for weeks around Biden's first task as a president-elect: Forming a government.
Who he decides to place around him both inside the West Wing and atop the slew of bureaucratic agencies that perform the daily duties of governing will be his first opportunity to demonstrate how effectively he can hold together his disparate coalition of traditional Democrats, reluctant progressives and disaffected Republicans.
Even allies acknowledge his pledge to appoint the most diverse Cabinet in American history will create ideological fissures.
"Joe's going to have to have a ideologically, geographically, racially, gender diverse administration. With that, comes the challenges. The same challenge that you'll have in the administration will be manifest in my caucus in the House," said Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan. "Governing is hard. That's just going to be our reality. It's a reality we can manage. ... I'll take that problem 100 times any day over this mess that we've had."
Progressives, who curbed their misgivings of Biden during the general election campaign, expect to see some of their own populating the highest rungs of the administration.
"It will be concerning if he only draws from the center or the corporate component of those forces and doesn't pick from progressive forces," said Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party. "If he chooses to align his forces with the Lincoln Project wing of the electorate, that would be a betrayal of the forces that created the conditions for victory."
But if Mitch McConnell is still running the Senate in January, the odds of confirming a polarizing nominee could drop precipitously. Control of the Senate may not be ultimately determined until Georgia holds two runoff elections on Jan. 5.
Mitchell argued that the demobilization of the progressive movement during the first few years of Obama's administration created the void that allowed the tea party to come to power, dragging the political conversation to the right and costing Democrats power. Others argue if Biden retreats from GOP threats early, he'll weaken himself.
"We must build new norms on the ashes of our old expectations," said Christine Pelosi, a Democratic activist and daughter of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "Make vulnerable GOP senators block Biden Cabinet picks, then install them as acting. Easy fix."
After that, Biden's most urgent assignment come January will be dealing with the ongoing pandemic, the economic fallout and potential vaccine. Ron Klain, a political strategist who served as the Ebola czar in 2014, appears to be the front-runner to become Biden's chief of staff, a move that would highlight the pandemic as the administration's top priority.
During a speech Friday night, Biden said voters had given him a "mandate for action on COVID and the economy and climate change and systemic racism."
While Biden campaigned on a fairly progressive policy platform, including a $15 minimum wage, a public option for health care, and 100% clean energy by 2035, a GOP-led Senate would severely complicate those plans.
But even if Democrats don't control the Senate, liberals argue that prioritizing those kinds of policies are essential to show voters what the party stands for.
"Nobody can ever say to us, 'There's no difference between the Republican or Democratic Party,'" said Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who is co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "Or, 'I don't like the Republican Party, but I don't think the Democrats do enough for us.'"
Attempts to push Biden to the left are already drawing the ire of more moderate Democrats, who say Sanders' inability to defeat Biden in the primary — and the success of more center-left moderates in battleground House and Senate races — show where the center of the gravity is in the party.
"It's going to be Joe Biden's party, and the far left can have a seat at the table," said Lanae Erickson, the senior vice president for the social policy and politics program at the center-left think tank Third Way. "But the idea they're going to drive the bus isn't based on anything. They haven't won anything.
And while the complete policy agenda is yet to be determined, the public will be most keenly tuned in to how Biden is managing the pandemic, the single biggest issue this election.
"Biden's pitch is a return to normalcy," Erickson said. "So if we can deliver on return to normalcy, that's a really big step. And if we're going into the midterms and so-and-so can go to a concert again and my kids are going back to school, that's a lot of progress really fast."
"The bar is exceptionally low," she added.
There's also a question of how Democrats will be able to retain the excitement and enthusiasm of their base of volunteers, many of whom became activists after Trump's inauguration.
Litman's group, Run for Something, formed in the aftermath of Trump's victory to encourage young people to run for office up and down the ballot, recruiting more than 50,000 candidates thus far. It was one of dozens such progressive grassroots-oriented groups that formed all over the country in the months following the 2016 election.
But while the veteran of Hillary Clinton's campaign acknowledges that she's worried about the party's big donors turning away from making contributions during a Biden presidency, she's less worried about on-the-ground volunteers doing the same.
Litman said they're tired, but for many, the last four years changed how their relationship with politics.
"Part of this is the way we have done this over the last four years, with social organization," Litman said. "Those friendships don't end, and the social ties you build and the habit you build about caring about politics doesn't go away."
Before Biden can even take office, however, his initial time in office might be determined by how Trump acts during his final two months in office.
"Will he be a sore loser and not provide relief for people who didn't reelect him?" pondered Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore, who described the lame-duck congressional session as an X-factor no one could predict. "Getting through the chaos will be his first order of business. Our very first challenge is making it to January 20th."
