The Shelf-Life On Biden's Version Of Bipartisanship Is Long Expired

You probably read about Status Quo Joe's babbling nonsense about how there would be a post-Trump Republican epiphany and everyone would live happily every after in the neoliberal/neocon world that has always been home base for Biden himself. Him and his "Republican friends." Yesterday we looked at this aspect of Biden's cluelessness from a progressive angle. There is also a conservative Republican angle. Philip Klein: "Biden has been trying to run as a more pragmatic Democrat relative to his 2020 opponents, but his latest comments suggesting post-Trump Republicans will have an 'epiphany' and become more willing to work with Democrats on policy come straight from Fantasyland... The idea that the nation will somehow return to the glory days of bipartisan action after Trump is out of office ignores the tremendous changes that have happened not only within the Republican Party, but in American politics more generally."

As far as Trump, while up through sometime in 2016, it may have been reasonable to dismiss him as some sort of aberration, at this point, the GOP is the party of Trump. He's now at 90% approval among Republicans, and many of his most acerbic critics from 2016 no longer identify as Republican or have been completely marginalized. Sure, whoever succeeds Trump is inevitably going to be different in personality alone, but the populist current that he marshaled is still going to be an influential force within Republican politics, as it existed before him. In the 2012 Republican primary, you had the boomlets of Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum-- all of whom represented different populist arguments: against the elites, the media, Washington politicians, and/or recognition of white working class economic anxieties. Even Mitt Romney, who was the establishment choice and ultimate nominee, fed into populist attitudes on trade and immigration in his march to victory. Trump was able to harness many of these strands in his own unique way, but the forces that led to him existed before and will not disappear once he exits the scene. At a minimum, the post-Trump GOP is likely to be closer to Trump than it is to, say, Max Boot or David Brooks or John Kasich.

Even putting aside the internal dynamics of the GOP, there are the broader changes to American politics. For starters, there has been a long-term shift in which parties are much more sorted by ideology than in the past, when they were more sorted by region. The other development is that a combination of social media, online fundraising, ideological journalism, and the prevalence of outside groups, have made members of Congress much more beholden to the right or left wings within their parties because they have more to fear from primary challengers. Transparency, and the backlash against earmarks, was another significant change to getting deals done in Congress.

The old days of bipartisanship that Biden longs for came at a time when there where there were a number of liberal northeast Republicans and conservative southern Democrats. In his day, it was extremely difficult for ideological activists to make their voices heard or to mount a serious primary challenges to incumbents who had the backing of the national party. It was also much easier to stick some pork barrel project into a deal cut with the opposing party and run home and boast about the money you brought to your district.

But, unless he's actually full-on senile-- a distinct possibility-- Biden himself is well-aware that his hypothesis is sheer nonsense. Michael Grunwald's 2012 book, The New New Deal mentions the leaders of the Republican Party's now infamous decision to deny the newly elected President Obama all cooperation for the explicit purpose of rendering his presidency a failure-- making it easier for the GOP to mount a political comeback after their disastrous 2008 losses. They were setting up what happened in the 2010 midterms. But, forget partisan bickering; this is nothing short of treason to the American people, something you could expect from a deranged and mentally unbalanced freak-- like McTurtle. Straight from the book:

Biden says that during the transition, he was warned not to expect any cooperation on many votes. "I spoke to seven different Republican Senators, who said, 'Joe, I’m not going to be able to help you on anything,' he recalls. His informants said McConnell had demanded unified resistance. "The way it was characterized to me was: 'For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back,'" Biden says.

The vice president says he hasn’t even told Obama who his sources were, but Bob Bennett of Utah and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania both confirmed they had conversations with Biden along these lines.

Former Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich also goes on record telling Grunwald that Republican marching orders were to oppose everything the Obama administration proposed. "If he was for it, we had to be against it," Voinovich tells Grunwald. And at another point, characterizing a strategy session Republicans and McConnell had held in early January of 2009, Voinovich said: "He wanted everyone to hold the fort. All he cared about was making sure Obama could never have a clean victory."

These were Biden's kind of Republicans, the ones he always gave more credence to that to Senate progressives. And even they told him it couldn't be done... a decade ago! Biden only has one thing going for him-- and he knows it... and it won't be enough to beat Trump: