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HHow do you hope to work with Republicans, Joe Biden was asked in his first press conference since winning the election, if they won’t even recognize him as president-elect? “They will,” he replied coldly. “They will do it.”
Whether this shows a triumph of optimism over experience remains to be seen (Biden has many of both). The Democrat made his reputation for crossing the political aisle one of the central tenets of his candidacy. He believes he will be able to do it again when he takes office in January.
Yet this bitterly polarized and hyperpartisan Washington looks vastly different from the club Senate it joined in 1973. Biden, who turns 78 next week, will likely go head-to-head with Mitch McConnell, also 78. years, the Republican Majority Leader who ruthlessly blocked much of Barack Obama’s legislative agenda.
“He’s going to fall into a trap because he’s constantly talking about the good times in the Senate,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “‘He knows how to do it and he’ll bring the Republicans to the Democrats.’ This is more than naive. It is illusory.
“He is living in a past that was destroyed long ago and the remnants have been cremated by Donald Trump. Cooperation simply does not exist except in things that are not controversial and that is not where cooperation is needed. You need cooperation to solve difficult problems, not easy ones. “
During his 36-year Senate career, Biden earned admiration, and some criticism, for his commitment to bipartisanship, which included working with Republicans like John McCain and delivering eulogies at the funeral of Strom Thurmond, a segregationist. “Dixiecrat “who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Speaking at a fundraiser in New York last year, Biden fondly recalled the “courtesy” of the Senate in the 1970s, where he cooperated with Democratic senators committed to racial segregation. Even if they “disagreed on much of anything,” Biden said, “we did things.”
During this year’s election campaign, Republicans like John Kasich, a former Ohio governor, joined Biden’s side against Trump. In his victory speech in Wilmington, Delaware, last Saturday, Biden vowed to be the president of all Americans and called for an end to the “grim age of demonization.”
However, he will not enjoy the dominance of Washington that opinion polls had led some to expect. Democrats held the House of Representatives, but Republicans are favored to maintain control of the Senate ahead of two runoff elections in Georgia in January. That would leave Biden as the first president since George HW Bush took office in 1989 without controlling both houses of Congress.
It is likely to demonstrate a reality check of dreams that Biden could emulate Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal with a historically ambitious agenda to address the multiple climate, economic, racial justice and coronavirus crises. Instead, commitment to healthcare, immigration, and tax rates appears to be the order of the day.
Some observers remain optimistic that Biden, with his vast experience in the Senate, is ideal to face the moment. Elaine Kamarck, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said during an online forum this week: “It has been a long time since we had a president of the United States who was so immersed in the legislative process. and in legislative history like Joe Biden.
“He spent many years in Congress, he actually knows a lot about him and knows a lot of the members of Congress. I think you would have to go back to Lyndon Baines Johnson to find a president who was a creature of Congress like Joe Biden. Second, Joe Biden likes to make deals – he’s good at it. That’s one of the things he did in the Obama administration, so I suspect he will try very hard. “
Kamarck also detected hope for Biden in the small group of Republican senators who parted ways with Trump by recognizing him as president-elect. “Now if I’m Mitch McConnell, that worries me a little bit. That could be that there is a block that could actually abandon me, particularly if the president of Biden and particularly if Biden plays his cards right and manages to find a way to get them involved on an issue or two. “
These would-be Republican rebels include Susan Collins, who won reelection in Maine and offered Biden her congratulations. She told the Associated Press: “Based on the number of phone calls I have received from Democratic senators and fellow Republicans, I have seen real interest in trying to expand the center and work together to address some of the challenges facing our nation. And that encourages me. “
Biden has worked with McConnell since the Kentucky Republican was elected in 1984. When he was Obama’s vice president, he found common ground with McConnell in resolving several fiscal and budget-related disputes, including a tax increase on top earners. in exchange for rolling over most of George W. Bush’s 2001 tax cuts. Biden will hope that pragmatism continues to work.
Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Government at the University of Minnesota, said: “When people say ‘bipartisan,’ it’s another way of saying that they have been resourceful in finding allies. It is not an obsession or the result of the romantic ‘post-partisan’ ideas that Obama had in 2008. Biden is adept at deploying the language of bipartisanship as a tool to try to win legislative victories. “
He added: “Biden knows the bottom line – he needs to comply with Covid containment and revive the economy. He will do what he has to do to get the resources to do that. “
There is also a school of thought in which McConnell will be relieved to see the back of the Trump program, with all its volatility and vulgarity, and will welcome a return to dealing with a White House steeped in traditional norms.
Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman, said, “McConnell and other Senate Republicans who don’t like Trump will be incentivized to get along with Biden a little bit and maybe give Biden some wins because the latest in the world McConnell and these Senate Republicans they want Trump to run again. So if they can work quietly with Biden and Biden can get a couple of wins, that will help Biden. “
Yet McConnell has shown time and again the nemesis of the Democrats. He notoriously blocked Merrick Garland, Obama’s supreme court nominee in the 2016 election year, but lashed out at Trump’s nominee Amy Coney Barrett in the 2020 election year. A decade ago he told the National Journal: “Lo The most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a president for a term. “
He failed in that goal, but could prove equally intransigent in hopes of crippling Biden’s presidency, knowing that Trump’s false claims about voter fraud will likely leave millions of people who consider the Democrat illegitimate. The context now is four years of extreme division, tribalism, and bubbles of alternate reality.
Neil Sroka, The communications director for the progressive group Democracy for America said: “We are going to have to see what is possible. We all have to be realistic about the tone and tenor that Republicans have adopted with Democrats since long before 2008. I think Biden has strangely rosy glasses when it comes to the ability to work with Republicans. But who knows?”
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