Obama's Rib... Except For People Over 100, Voters Want More Than That

Imagine that Mr. Obama's Rib wins the primary and then the general and gets inaugurated. How many hours before Mr. Obama's Rib pardons Trump, Trump's family and most Trump enablers?

Yesterday, Matt Viser and Seung Min Kim wrote in a Washington Post piece, Compromise vs Combat-- Democratic Divide Grows Over How To Deal With Republicans, that Status Quo Joe "repeatedly touts the need to return to an era of bipartisan comity, saying that 'compromise is not a dirty word' and predicting that Republicans will have an 'epiphany' on bipartisanship after President Trump is out of office." No one has suggested Biden was drunk or had taken peyote buttons. Instead people recognize that "Biden's view is naive and harks back to an era of bipartisanship that no longer exists, rather than confronting the hardball tactics that have helped Republicans notch big political wins in recent years." Less sleepy Democrats aren't happy with Biden's perspective-- a perspective that Democratic voters over 100 who only want to hear positive news. Elizabeth Warren: "We’re done with two sets of rules, one for the Republicans and one for the Democrats."

Bernie is "against the incremental reforms that political compromise tends to yield. Warren and some other Democrats want to change Senate rules so they can usher in sweeping changes without needing help from the minority party, support that they say they would never get."

Democrats who favor a more aggressive approach argue that Republicans are rewriting the rule book. McConnell’s refusal to hold a vote, or even a hearing, for Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland continues to anger those who say that by rights it should be liberals, not conservatives, who are cementing their Supreme Court majority.

Trump, too, has upended many norms, including by largely rejecting congressional oversight and refusing to release his tax returns. In some states, Republican-led legislatures have reacted to a Democrat’s winning the governor’s office by reducing the power of the office.

The question facing Democrats is whether the right response to all this is to fight back with similar aggression or try to restore a greater sense of unity to the country. Some candidates think that voters have grown fatigued with the animosity and liken the political parties to children bickering in the back seat of a car.

...In the current presidential field, few have made bipartisanship as much of a centerpiece as Biden, who suggested this week at a fundraiser in Houston that the country’s polarization has been exaggerated, an assessment not shared by most of his rivals.

“America’s less divided today on issues than when I got to the Senate as a 29-year-old kid,” said Biden, referring to his election in 1972. “Then we were divided on everything from war to the women’s movement to civil rights, across the board.”

Biden represents a more genial way of fighting in the political arena, an approach in which a leader may question an opponent’s policies but not the person’s character. It is in part a testament to his time in the Senate, where a speaker might call a colleague “my good friend and one of this body’s most distinguished members,” before proceeding to excoriate that colleague’s ideas.

In March, Biden was criticized for calling Vice President Pence “a decent guy.”

Actress and liberal activist Cynthia Nixon tweeted at Biden, “You’ve just called America’s most anti-LGBT elected leader ‘a decent guy.’ Please consider how this falls on the ears of our community.”

Biden said in response that he was speaking in a foreign-policy context and that “there’s nothing decent” about Pence’s views on gay rights.

That was not enough for Nixon. “Please understand from where we sit,” she wrote, “his dehumanizing of our community disqualifies @MikePence for the honorific of ‘decent,’ regardless of the context.”

Biden’s stories about events that occurred more than 45 years ago highlight his detractors’ view that he is living in a bygone era, and some liberals say Democrats would be foolish to unilaterally disarm when facing a formidable opponent such as McConnell.

“It’s always an easy applause line to talk about your willingness to work across the line, but at this point, it’s just plain dishonest for any Democrat to go around acting like they will be able to clink glasses of bourbon with Mitch McConnell to get progressive legislation enacted,” said Brian Fallon, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY).

allon, who was also a top aide to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, took aim at Democrats who long for the days when President Ronald Reagan and then-House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill (D-MA) famously put aside their differences to work across party lines.

“The next Democratic president needs to have a plan to bring about structural change, because the days of Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neil are gone, and they ain’t coming back so long as McConnell is in charge on the Republican side,” Fallon said.

As more and more people under 100, really that the most important issue facing Ameri humanity is the Climate Crisis, Greenpeace just rated all the presidential nominees and gave Status Quo Joe a D-minus. Here are the rankings:

• Jay Inslee-- A-
• Bernie-- B+
• Cory Booker-- B+
• Kirsten Gillibrand-- B
• Elizabeth Warren-- B
• Tulsi Gabbard-- B
• Beto-- B-
• Marianne Williamson-- C
• McKensey Pete-- C
• Kamala Harris-- C-
• Eric Swalwell-- C-
• Amy Klobuchar-- C-
• John Delaney-- D+
• Andrew Yang-- D+
• Julian Castro-- D+
• Steve Bullock-- D
• Tim Ryan-- D-
• Joe Biden-- D-
• Frackenlooper-- D-
• Bill Weld-- F
• Señor Trumpanzee-- F

See, what have I been tellin' ya? Biden is better than Trump. He's even better than Frackenlooper and Bill Weld. That may be a low bar-- I mean it is-- but Biden isn't that much better than a garden variety Republican. He's lucky there's nothing garden variety about Señor T.