President-elect Joe Biden faces a wildly daunting first 100 days in office.
On the heels of major vaccine developments, Biden committed that his team will help get “at least 100 million Covid vaccine shots into the arms of the American people in the first 100 days.”
It will be a massive undertaking, which he acknowledged Tuesday.
“This will be the most efficient mass vaccination plan in US history. I credit everyone who has gotten us to this point, but developing the vaccine is one herculean task,” Biden said. “Distributing it is another.”
This is on top of his pending nationwide 100-day mask mandate.
It will also be complicated by President Donald Trump’s ongoing refusal to admit Biden is the President-elect. Biden’s team was not invited to Tuesday’s vaccine summit at the White House – Trump instead falsely insisted he had won the election.
“We’re going to have to see who the next administration is. Because we won in those swing states,” Trump wrongly claimed when asked why no members of the Biden team had been invited to the summit. “Hopefully the next administration will be the Trump administration.
Thanks in part to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, presidents’ first 100 days are seen as an important benchmark – their first chance to deliver on campaign promises and get to the business of governing before public opinion shifts (and elections start to get in the way).
But none have faced a never-before-attempted vaccine distribution plan amid an economic crisis – on top of Biden’s own ambitious policy goals.
The Point: Biden has one heck of a first 100 days in store.
