Although I will vote for whomever the Democratic candidate is in 2020, if it’s Joe Biden I will have to hold my nose, hope for the best, and make sure my relationship with the Canadian side of the family is solid.
“With Trump gone, you’re going to begin to see things change,” Biden assured. “Because these folks know better. They know this isn’t what they’re supposed to be doing.”
That quote alone will cause many Democratic activists to begin throwing things. But then there’s what he said next. To drive home his argument that Republicans would work with him as president, he pointed to none other than… Merrick Garland.
Via the pool report:
Biden backed up the claim by recalling when he called 12 of his former Republican colleagues after Merrick Garland’s SCOTUS nomination was blocked by McConnell and they all expressed external concerns, he said.
Biden will continue to argue Tuesday that congressional Republicans are aware they are engaged in something that’s wrong. He’s set to echo the “know better” during a speech in Iowa bashing Trump. “He is deliberately and completely ignoring the legitimate authority of the Congress,” Biden will say, according to prepared remarks, “and he’s doing it with the full complicity of the Republicans in Congress, who know better.”
This is taking wishful thinking to pathological extremes. And it’s not just Merrick Garland: Biden seems to be glossing over (or perhaps forgetting) the entire eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency. Reporter Aaron Blake gives us a a synopsis.
The Garland stonewall was merely the icing on the obstruction cake for Republicans during the Obama administration. For the lion’s share of eight years — all of which Biden had a front-row seat for as the man presiding over the Senate — they blocked pretty much everything Obama put forward. The result was they turned a brief 60-seat, filibuster-proof Democratic majority into an eight-seat Republican majority, and then they won the presidency.
I’ll offer some specifics. When Obama took office, the economy was collapsing around us. He deliberately shrunk the economic stimulus to get the GOP on board. In the end not a single House Republican voted for it, and it took more than five hours of debate and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown flying in from his mother’s wake to get it through the Senate. But the GOP, says Biden, will work with a Democratic president.
Obama’s healthcare reforms were cribbed from the Heritage Foundation and Mitt Romney. Obama weakened his own reforms to attract Republican votes. How’d that work out? Not a single Senate or House Republican voted for the bill. But the GOP, Joe Biden says, will work with a Democratic president after Trump, “because they know better.”
Politico has more.
[T]hey also filibustered and voted in lockstep against previously uncontroversial Obama priorities, like extended unemployment benefits, expanded infrastructure spending and small-business tax cuts. Senate Republicans even turned routine judicial nominations into legislative ordeals, filibustering 20 of his district court judges—17 more than had been filibustered under all of his predecessors.
Frankly, we are damned lucky in some ways that the GOP was so obstinate, because Obama was willing to cut our Social Security to get the Republicans to cooperate with him. The GOP said no, because they hated him THAT much. But Joe Biden says the GOP will work with a Democratic president, because “they know better.”
This says nothing of previous instances of Republicans doing awful things when “they know better” for politics’ sake. Terri Schiavo. The Iraq War. The southern strategy. Voter suppression.
What the GOP knows is that obstruction works, voting in lockstep works, and a single-minded obsession with their goals works. Joe Biden should know better.
What Joe Biden should also know is that Republican goals are fundamentally different than Democratic goals. So maybe “they know better” than to tear the country apart, but that is clearly not important to them. What is important to them -and what should be important to Democrats- is winning, then passing your policies using any and all means at your disposal, and damn the opposition. It’s not 1998 anymore. It’s not 1988 or 1978 either. Ronnie and Tip ain’t sippin’ cocktails after a hard day of sparring.
Joe Biden knows better than this, and he is insulting the intelligence of all Democrats regardless of age when he promises he can work with Republicans. Maybe he can work with them — but the GOP has shown it will not work with him.
Mmm yeah vote for Joe. Sure about that? I’m beginning to wonder. Don’t all jump on me I’m only beginning to wonder.
Are you seriously “wondering” whether it would be better to not vote for Biden if he gets the Democratic nomination? Really?! Please game that out in a serious way if enough voters do that.
You’re right of course but the more I hear about Joe the more….. Fortunately though I live in a deep red state.
I didn’t say that at all. Good lord. I just said I’d be holding my nose. If he really thinks the GOP will suddenly turn on a dime after 4 years of Trumpism, I think he has a surprise coming.
I will enthusiastically vote for whoever the Democrats nominate.
While you say Uncle Joe “should know better”, a bigger problem may be that he simply doesn’t know better. Learning could be beyond him at this point.
If I were running for president, I would say the same thing. The history laid our here is obvious. It’s possible Biden has some other perspective on it (the Vice Presidency isn’t worth much, after all), but there’s no disputing the record of Republicans these paset thirty or forty years. But there are a lot of American voters out there who don’t pay such close attention to politics, believe that both sides are at fault, and will vote for the guy singing kumbaya. The question is: does Joe Biden actually believe this? I suspect that he does. Still, if I were Biden, I’d be saying it too.
Why bother saying this when you’re going to get made to look a fool if he wins? Even if Yertle the Turtle is in the minority come 2021 he’s going to bottle up everything the Democrats attempt unless they completely abolish the filibuster. That Democrats are not educating their voters on this fact is one of the biggest instances of political malpractice in ages, and there have been a lot of them in the past 12 years.
5
Further, is the Biden Doctrine actually an effective conciliatory message to elected Repubs? Uncle Joe’s spoken message: “They know better! The Immoral Monster made ’em do it!” The unspoken: “They’re just craven cowards who don’t have the spine to do what they know is right.” Also, too, should/does the Repub base “know better” as well, Uncle Joe?
So the political calculation is to court the remaining American Pollyannas while insulting the intelligence of everyone else? And using Merrick Garland[!] as “proof” of his “They Know Better” theorem? Jeebus, the mind reels.
5
5