You can either file this story under “gumption” or unmitigated gall. Take your pick. Apparently acting on the assumption that Joe Biden is going to win on Tuesday, New York’s Attorney General, Letitia James, has announced that she’s working on “a long list” of items for Joe Biden to take care of once he’s sworn into office. The list will focus on “undoing” all of the Bad Things that the Bad Orange Man has done while in office thus far. If you find yourself wondering what authority the Attorney General of a single state has to set these priorities and push herself into the national agenda, you’re not alone. But in her mind, this is clearly Letitia James’ world and you’re just living in it. (NBC News)

New York Attorney General Letitia James says her office is preparing a substantial list of legal actions for a potential Biden administration to begin quickly reversing Trump administration initiatives, she told NBC News in an interview.

“We’re preparing a list. And the list is long,” she said Thursday. “We’ll have a team of individuals, again, working on reversing all of the bad regulations and laws that have been put forth … We will work with the Biden administration to ask them to file stays in a number of cases that are pending in the courts all across this country.”

James, a leading Democratic state attorney general, said she and her colleagues are also reviewing “legal options to determine what action, if any” state attorneys general will take should the election results be contested.

You’ll notice that James is already anticipating the possibility of a contested election with some court battles looming. In light of that, she’s also preparing a list of “legal options” for the states to take. Isn’t that thoughtful of her?

But it should be worth asking who designated Letitia James as the person to handle all of these issues on a national level and set forth an agenda for the next president. After all, despite all the headlines she receives from an adoring liberal press, James is among the most junior Attorneys General in the nation. She is not the President of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG). In fact, she’s not even on the Executive Committee. She’s a total back-bencher in that regard, and yet she’s presuming to speak for all of them this week.

It’s been no secret in New York that Letitia James has an extremely high opinion of herself. Despite her relatively limited experience, spending part of her career on the New York City Council rather than dealing with law enforcement, she fancies herself as a future Mayor or Governor, perhaps both. When she ran for the office of Attorney General, she campaigned on a platform focused almost entirely on being a leader of the “resistance” against President Trump rather than dealing with law enforcement in the Empire State. Since taking office, she’s made good on that promise at least, spending time and resources investigating every aspect of Donald Trump’s business dealings, seeking to gain access to his tax returns and snooping around every one of his associates in the region.

What she’s never seemed to care very much about is actually prosecuting criminals. She was a huge supporter of the “bail reform” initiatives in New York and she eagerly worked to “empty the jails” rather than putting actual criminals behind bars. I’m hardly the first one to suggest that the office of Attorney General is less about a career in law enforcement for Letitia James and far more about a platform from which she can launch her future ambitions.

Does she perhaps see herself as some sort of default choice as Joe Biden’s United States Attorney General? While I wouldn’t put it past Uncle Joe to cave to the idea that he’s required to select a Black woman for the office in the name of political correctness and identity politics, James would still be a rather abysmal choice in terms of experience. She only took her current office last year. That doesn’t exactly project the idea of “experience” or leadership in terms of ascending to such a lofty position. If Biden really wants to send a message with his AG pick, he could serve himself far better by picking someone like Karl Racine, the Attorney General for the District of Columbia. He’s a Democrat, he’s Black, he’s a Haitian immigrant, the president-elect of the NAAG and has a long record of experience in the law and law enforcement. He ticks all of the boxes for a Democratic president.

But despite all of this, you can expect the media to fawn over these pronouncements from Letitia James and sing her praises as an “important voice” in this momentous historical moment. Of course, if Donald Trump wins on Tuesday, she can always go back to chasing after his tax returns as a hobby.