Story:
I think you’re going to see even Mitch McConnell changing some ideas or being more ― how can I say ― mildly cooperative.
WTF is he smoking? And it doesn’t get any better when you read the rest of the statement:
I predicted once we found that we took back the House, you would find members of the House of Representatives who thought that some of the policies ... being proposed by the administration were wrong would start to step up. No sense in stepping up when you’re going to lose anyway, because then you’re in real trouble with your own outfit. But it becomes worth it if you step up and it actually changes policy. That’s what you [are] beginning to see in the House. And that’s [what] you begin to see in the Senate.
I’m not suggesting all of a sudden everyone’s going to project a new sense of courage and political courage. What I’m suggesting [is] that the dynamic changes when the right vote, as opposed to the vote you don’t agree with, becomes a possibility if you vote for it. But when it’s not a possibility if you vote for it, there’s no sense in doing it because all you’re doing is going to be ostracized by your outfit. And nothing’s going to change. That’s just the way human nature works. Think about it [in] your own lives. That’s how politics works. And so that’s why I think you’re going to see even Mitch McConnell changing some ideas or being more ― how can I say ― mildly cooperative.
Is Biden paying any attention whatsoever? Has he not witnessed every Senate Republican fall in line and agree to hold a rigged trial? Did he not see all House Republicans vote against impeachment? Or that the one Republican who displayed any courage at all, Justin Amash, was forced to leave the party?
As the article points out:
McConnell is a modern-day Machiavelli, known for his ruthlessness. And there’s absolutely no indication that he will cooperate at all with Democrats, even if they take control of the White House.
After all, his most breathtaking show of partisanship happened before Trump became president. In March 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left when Justice Antonin Scalia died. Even though Obama had nearly a year left in office, McConnell blocked the judge’s nomination. He refused to even give Garland a vote in committee, let alone on the Senate floor. And he has since helped Trump remake the federal judiciary with a number of extreme, unqualified nominees.
On one of the most notable deals Biden helped cut with McConnell during the Obama administration ― an extension of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts ― the final outcome was seen as a win for Republicans.
(emphasis mine)
And heck, on that last—Michael Bennet, of all people, called Biden out for that during an early debate. He’s no liberal himself, and even he can recognize that Biden gave away too much. Not to mention that to make the deal, he undercut his own party’s leadership, specifically Harry Reid—who then did an end run around him when Ted Cruz shut down the government. Probably not coincidentally, that’s one of the few times Obama did not cave to the GOP.
Let’s take stock—Joe Biden helped a Republican congressman get reelected in 2018. He’s spent the whole year telling us how Republican are awesome and are going to have an epiphany when Trump is gone---ignoring the fact that they’re becoming more and more unhinged and fascistic in defense of Trump, ignoring the fact that they weren’t exactly “normal” before Trump. He tells people who waver on the GOP, “stay a Republican,” and that’s he “concerned” for what happens if the GOP loses a lot of power in 2020. Now he tells us that he’s sure Mitch McConnell will cooperate. Merrick Garland says hello.
I fully expect the angry excuses about how #actually, this is a brilliant, eleventy-dimensional chess strategy and he surely doesn’t mean it. I refer you to the Obama years—were his repeated capitulations to the GOP some brilliant, eleventy-dimensional chess strategy that brought us long-term gains and showed people how unreasonable the GOP is? Considering the party got decimated and the era culminated in the election of Donald Trump, I’d say the answer is a resounding no!
If this is any kind of strategy, it’s not brilliant, it’s stupid. It’s no more intelligent than pretending Hitler and Mussolini were reasonable people, or that their fascist parties would have been reasonable without them. You don’t see Republicans campaigning on the assertion that there are a lot of good Democrats out there, and you also don’t see Republicans losing many elections. Democrats need to fight back and tell the truth.
And if Biden actually believes any of this—delusional is too kind a word for that.
We have been warned. Nominate Biden at our own peril. Someone with this little understanding of modern politics is not going to be a good president. And as for the campaign against Trump—let’s see, Biden can’t stop fawning over how awesome the Republican Party is, says he doesn’t want *his own party* to gain much more power, would completely depress the youth vote. That’s the strongest candidate against Trump? Give me a break.
If I were Mitch McConnell, I’d be praying every night that Democrats nominate Biden. Even if Biden wins, his obsession with bipartisanship and delusions about the GOP will make it easy for McConnell to roll Biden and get almost everything he wants. We saw it on the Bush tax cuts, we saw it on the debt ceiling when Boehner crowed that he “got 98% of what I wanted.” Get ready for 4 years of that under Biden, as Trump’s policies get entrenched and fester, while the planet continues to burn and Biden does nothing because the GOP won’t give him permission.
Nominating Biden is the biggest mistake we could possibly make right now. Let’s not do it.