Biden has set sky-high expectations. Can he meet them?

Back when election was tightening and just a week away, Joe Biden went big.He flew to Warm Springs, Georgia town whose rmal waters once brought Franklin Dela Roosevelt comfort from polio, and pledged a restitching of America's ecomic and policy fabric unseen since FDR's New Deal. Evoking some of nation's loftiest reforms helped Biden unseat President Donald Trump but left him with towering promises to keep . And he'll be trying to deliver against backdrop of searing national division and a pandemic that has killed nearly 400,000 Americans and upended ecomy.

Such change would be hard to imagine under any circumstances, much less w. He's setting out with Democrats clinging to razor-thin House and Senate control and after having won an election in which 74 million people voted for his opponent. And even if his ministration accomplishes most of its top goals in legislation or executive action, those actions are subject to being struck down by a Supreme Court w controlled by a 6-3 conservative majority.

Even so, effort is soon underway. Washington is bracing for dozens of consequential executive actions starting Wednesday and stretched over first 10 days of Biden's ministration, as well as legislation that will begin working its way through Congress on pandemic relief, immigration and much more.

Has Biden promised more than he can deliver? t in his estimation. He suggests he can accomplish even more than he promised. He says he and his team will “do our best to beat all expectations you have for country and expectations we have for it.” Some Democrats say Biden is right to set great expectations while realizing he'll have to compromise, rar than starting with smaller goals and having to scale m back furr.

“You can’t say to a nation that is hungry, uncertain, in some places afraid, whose ecomy has stalled out ... that you h to slim down request of ir government because you have a narrow governing margin,” said former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Biden's onetime Democratic presidential primary rival.

New presidents generally enjoy a honeymoon period that helps m in Congress, and Biden's prospects for getting one were improved by Democratic victories this month in two Georgia special Senate elections. He may have been helped, too, by a public backlash against dely, armed insurrection at U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.

Biden's visers have ackwledged y'll have bitter fights ahe. One approach y have in mind is a familiar one in Washington — consolidating some big ideas into what is kwn as omnibus legislation, so that lawmakers who want popular measures passed have to swallow more controversial measures as well.

Ar approach is to pursue goals through executive orders. Doing so skirts Congress altoger but leaves measures more easily challenged in court. Trump me hefty use of executive orders for some of his most contentious actions, on border enforcement, environment and more, but federal courts often got in way.

Biden's top priority is congressional approval of a $1.9 trillion coronavirus plan to minister 100 million vaccines by his 100th day in office while also providing $1,400 direct payments to Americans to stimulate virus-hammered ecomy. That's slam dunk, even though everyone likes to get money from government.

Any such payment is likely to be paired with measures many in Congress oppose, perhaps his proposed mandate for a $15 national minimum w, for example. And Biden's relief pack will have to clear a Senate consumed with approving his top Cabinet choices and with conducting Trump's potential impeachment trial. Neverless, deluge is coming.

On Day One alone, Biden has promised to extend pause on federal student loan payments, move to have U.S. rejoin World Health Organization and Paris climate accord and ask Americans to commit to 100 days of mask-wearing. He plans to use executive actions to overturn Trump ministration's ban on immigrants from several majority-Muslim countries and wipe out corporate tax cuts where possible, while doubling levies U.S. firms pay on foreign profits.

That same day, Biden has pledged to create task forces on homelessness and reuniting immigrant parents with children separated at U.S.-Mexico border. He'll plan to send bills to Congress seeking to mandate stricter background checks for gun buyers, scrap firearm manufacturers' liability protections and provide a pathway to citizenship for 11 million immigrants who came to U.S. illegally as children.

new president furr wants to relax limits immediately on federal workers unionizing, reverse Trump’s rollback of about 100 public health and environmental rules that Obama ministration instituted and create rules to limit corporate influence on his ministration and ensure Justice Department's independence.

He also pledged to have 100 vaccination centers supported by federal emergency manment personnel up and running during his first month in White House.

Biden says he'll use Defense Production Act to increase vaccine supplies and ensure pandemic is under eugh control after his first 100 days in office for most public schools to reopen nationwide. He's also pledged to have created a police oversight commission to combat institutional racism by n.

Among or major initiatives to be tackled quickly: rejoining U.S.-Iran nuclear deal, a $2 trillion climate pack to get U.S. to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, a plan to spend $700 billion boosting manufacturing and research and development and building on Obama ministration's health care law to include a “public option.”

Perhaps obscured in that pare of promises, though, is fact that some of 80 million-plus voters who backed Biden may have done so to oppose Trump, t because y're thrilled with an ambitious Democratic nda. president-elect's victory may t have been a mandate to pull a country that emerged from last election essentially centrist so far to left.

Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak predicted early Republican support for Biden's coronavirus relief and ecomic stimulus spending plans, but said that may evaporate quickly if “y issue a bunch of first-day, left-wing executive orders.”

“You can't be bipartisan with one hand and left-wing with or,” Mackowiak said, “and hope that Republicans don't tice.”

Biden h a front-row seat as vice president in 2009, when Barack Obama took office, with crowds jamming National Mall, and promised to transcend partisan politics. His ministration used larger congressional majorities to oversee slow ecomic growth after 2008 financial crisis, and it passed health law Biden w seeks to expand.

But Obama failed to get major legislation passed on climate change, ethics or immigration. He failed, too, to close U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which remains open to this day.

Falling short on promises n hasn't me Biden more chastened today. He ackwledges that doing even a small portion of what he wants will require running up huge deficits, but he argues U.S. has an “ecomic imperative” and “moral obligation” to do so.

Kelly Dietrich, founder of National Democratic Training Committee and former party fundraiser, said divisions fomented by Trump could give Biden a unique opportunity to push ahe immediately and igre conservative critics who “are going to complain and cry and make stuff up" and argue that socialists are "coming to kick your puppy.” Biden and his team would do well to brush off anyone who doesn't think he can aim high, he said.“y should t be distracted by people who think it’s disappointing or it can’t happen," Dietrich said. "Overwhelm people with action. ministration, after it’s over, says, ’We accomplished too much in first hundred days.’”

(Im Credit: AP)