GOP lawmakers would see the error of their ways
Biden’s red-hot New Idea is to run as The Guy Who Can Work With Republicans. People who know anything about Republicans think he’s doolally.
Joe Biden insists that congressional Republicans will work with him once he’s elected president but no one,
let alone[especially] those who worked with Biden in the last administration, actually believes him.The former vice president’s latest promise of a forthcoming wave of bipartisan cooperation came on Monday night, when he told a crowd of fundraisers in Washington D.C. that he believed that when Donald Trump left office, GOP lawmakers would see the error of their ways. “[T]hese folks know better,” he explained. “They know this isn’t what they’re supposed to be doing.”
Uh huh, and Donald Trump is really a nice guy at heart.
The line echoed comments that Biden reflects a strategy he’s adopted to appeal to voters as a throwback to a less divisive era and is based on the belief that the rest of the political establishment will join him there.
But veterans of the Obama administration say that Biden is either being naive or is willfully selling voters on a political fairytale.
“Fuck no,” one senior Obama aide said when asked if Republicans would be willing to work with a hypothetical President Biden.
Yep, I’m with “Fuck no” here. Republicans may know this isn’t “what they’re supposed to be doing”, but they sure as hell don’t care. They don’t take any kind of ethical view of the matter; they take a “give us all the power forever” view of it.
“Right on,” Ben Labolt, Obama’s 2012 campaign press secretary, said sarcastically of Biden’s call to renew bipartisan cooperation. “Mitch McConnell and [Rep.] Mark Meadows will rush to form the Woke Caucus. And Nelson Rockefeller will be revived from his grave.”
…
The legislative collaborations that Biden is best known for are not particularly popular among Democratic activists. And the deals he hashed out with McConnell—first to extend the Bush era tax cuts in exchange for stimulative tax measures, the second to extend many of those tax cuts even further while paving the way for large spending cuts—are often regarded as progressive low points of the Obama era; so much so that, to this day, Senate Republicans revel in them.
“Vote for me,” says Joe, “I can work with the Republicans, so that they get to slash taxes on the rich and I get to…say I can work with them.”
“It’s either delusional or dishonest,” said Adam Jentleson, who served as Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s deputy chief of staff during the last two years of the Obama administration. “Republicans reaped enormous gains from their obstruction, like securing the balance of the Supreme Court for a generation or more. They know obstruction works and they will eat Biden’s lunch while he reminisces about the good old days.”
Well, but at least little girls will learn that they’re fuck toys and nothing else.
What is wrong with him? He can’t seriously believe this. And even if he does, . . . .no, I can’t make any sense of this. It’s disconnected from all reality.
Josh, there’s a lot of that about, these days.
I fail to understand why anyone who is paying attention would want to work with the Republicans in Congress. I realize it is nearly impossible right now to get anything passed without some crossover votes, yes, I know that, but…what we have to give up to get even NO Republicans on board is breathtaking. What he needs to be doing is finding out how to work with the Democrats in Congress who keep crossing the aisle to vote the other way…not many are doing that right now, but in some cases (Brett Kavanaugh comes to mind) it doesn’t take but one or two.
And Biden would do much better to help elect Democrats to Congress so we don’t need to kowtow to and baby and pamper the spoiled entitled Republican infants that want to eat all the candy. That’s a hard job right now, because the Republicans have managed to steer the dialogue in their direction, move the Overton window way to the right of Richard Nixon, and brand everyone who disagrees with them as a ‘libtard’. The Dems need to pull that Overton window back…I have no idea how to do it now, but I’m willing to bet it’s possible, though extremely difficult. We wait much longer, it won’t be possible anymore.
It’s been pretty clear for a long time that the only way for the Democrats to get any kind of major legislation passed is to win the White House, the House, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. And even then it’s painful because the only way to get 60 Senate seats is to elect some fairly conservative Dems in places like Montana. All the wonderful plans that the Democratic candidates put forward don’t really matter because they don’t have a chance of passing. The best we can hope is a president who can conduct a coherent foreign policy and who will enforce the laws as written, and maybe get a few moderate bits of legislation passed.
Also, as Eugene Robinson pointed out, we’d be better off if some of the candidates ran for Senate instead.
If he can pull the Senate with him it doesn’t really matter… and if he can’t it doesn’t really matter either… This sort of “bipartisan” shit is super popular with the stupid and evil “moderates” who think they have a morally superior view…
Republicans won’t work with him, but he sure has done his level best throughout his career to accommodate them.
Just ask Anita Hill.
I really hope (wish?) that someone in the upcoming debate (ideally another candidate) says “Oh, you can work with Republicans and get them on board? So where the fuck were you when Obama was seeing his agenda blocked wholesale? Oh, that’s right, you were Vice President.” Mic drop. :-)
Claire, that’s a really good point isn’t it. His only defence would be that the GOP found Obama untenable (because he was black), but then if the GOP are going to find anything approaching civil rights untenable (as they seem to do), then clearly no one even remotely reasonable can work with them as they currently exist.