I don’t think Jeff Flake has a strong record of being correct about things, and I suspect he’s wrong about this:
Former Sen. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) said if Mr. Biden were elected president and the Republicans held onto the Senate majority, there would be a sufficient number of Republicans willing to work with the Democratic administration.
Mr. Flake said he expected Mr. Biden and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), who served together in the Senate for decades and worked together when Mr. Biden was vice president, to be able to compromise.
He said the party’s left flank was likely to pressure Mr. Biden, but added, “Joe Biden, of anybody that’s running, is well equipped to handle this kind of thing. He’s a creature of the Senate, he knows how to negotiate.”
A more interesting (and plausible) thought experiment involves contemplating how the Republicans will react if Biden wins the presidency and the Republicans lose the Senate. In that case, there will the legislative filibuster to consider, and it will be relevant to both sides. In that scenario, the Republicans would have no power at all if the legislative filibuster were eliminated, so they’d have an incentive to cooperate just enough to make it difficult for the Democrats’ to get rid of it. Yet, Mitch McConnell isn’t known for cooperation, and it’s very hard for Republicans to work with Democrats without getting punished by their own media organs and their own primary voters. Even more problematic, the Republicans most likely to cross the aisle will be the ones that just lost their seats.
Still, there’s at least a chance that Biden could push through some modestly bipartisan legislation with the filibuster still in place. It will be a pyrrhic victory, however, because the larger effect would be to kill any truly ambitious legislation. He’d probably be trading a couple of decent bills and some good news cycles for the loss of his honeymoon period without truly transformative change. It makes much more sense to simply eliminate the GOP as a barrier to action.
If he does that, however, he’ll lose a natural brake on the demands of the left and discover that his veto pen is the only restraint on legislation that might cause a significant political backlash. To protect him from those types of decisions, a pro-Biden faction will develop within the Democratic Caucus with the responsibility to protect the administration from the progressives’ ambitions which might be too heedless of the politics. The point at which the progressive wish list passes from righteous to suicidal will be debated, and it’s quite possible that the Biden faction will be overly cautious, but there is an actual dividing line.
The point of winning elections is always to exercise power, not simply to protect it so that you can win the next election, but we saw in 2010 how a president’s freedom of action can be taken away in one bad midterm election. Many progressives are issues-oriented and don’t have the responsibility for keeping a majority, so they’re not going to restrain themselves. All of this makes it likely that the Democratic Party will become fractious if the Republicans lose all their power to obstruct. It’s more comfortable for everyone if any limitations on what can be done legislatively is imposed from without than from within.
But these are problems that we should welcome, because they’re so much better than what we’re dealing with now or would face in a second Trump term.
I do believe that Biden has genuine Republican friends in Congress, and I think he can probably make that work for him in some limited cases, but he’s going to be better off by a mile if he’s fighting with his left flank than if he’s fighting with Mitch McConnell.
Our political system has been so sclerotic for so long, so unable to address basic inequities, that there’s a built up backlash, a demand for substantial and immediate change. Everyone knows that to delay is typically to deny so it’s hard for everyone to get behind the idea of solidifying prior gains and advancing by the inch.
Of course that runs counter to the fact that no one ever ate an apple in one bite without choking to death. And there isn’t trust between the flanks of the party. Too many years of DLC types ignoring or subverting progressives and progressives undermining or subverting practical efforts to accomplish what could be accomplished in a particular moment.
>>a pro-Biden faction will develop within the Democratic Caucus with the responsibility to protect the administration from the progressives
this is not exactly a bold prediction. What Democratic leaders are best at is keeping progressives in our place. they didn’t oppose Trump effectively but by God they’ll oppose the left.
True that it’s not bold, but it’s explanatory. This is natural and unavoidable, but where to draw the line is debatable. First, you have to have someone who wants to lean as far to the progressives as they can, and Biden doesn’t fit that bill. Yet, he’s also no Manchin.
Yes, it helps that Biden is a politician who’s always positioned himself at the center of the Democratic coalition. (Of course, so was Obama and that didn’t help congressional Dems running for office in 2010.)
The coalition Biden has now is fragile. Some of those republicans while disliking Trump are not at all high on someone like AOC. So she and the left are a threat. I had hoped they would eliminate the filibuster but I doubt that now. And there is already dissent on the left so this whole thing could come crashing down around Jan 21 2021. But I will bite my tongue to get this disease out of the WH.
Heck, some of those Republicans aren’t at all high on Biden.
Some may/will become centrist Democrats—mirror images of 1980s “Reagan Democrats” who used to say, “I didn’t leave the Democratic party; it left me.” But others will start criticizing Biden’s decisions (assuming he wins the election) before Thanksgiving.
Ha ha already thanksgiving? I’m hoping it is done by Xmas or Trump will surely claim a fraud if he loses. And I see AOC is now angry at NBC for a tweet criticizing her for not supporting Biden in her nominating speech after the DNC asked her to nominate Sanders. So it begins.
Kasich had all he could do to just stand there. But why should I criticize him.
Martin – what do you think of the case of Sacramento?
I remember during Aahnold’s years, there were IOUs from State of California because budgets would not pass year after year on time.
One year he persuaded the one R vote he needed, and the very next day the right wing radio noise machine cranked up to recall that legislator.
Now the Rs have been reduced to a rump in state legislature, and during Brown and now Newsom, we have not had a budget battle (of significance), and ran surplus budgets for a while.
Get rid of Republican party – and let a new principled opposition arise in its place. There are instances of when a party has outlived its welcome. The current avatar of the R party has long turned sour!
There may be a reckoning if the wipeout is immense. In that case it might be that some Republicans end up supporting the green new deal, for example, although it seems pretty unlikely. Practically I think the way to handle this is ignore the Republicans and go with a populist message. Stand on two years of achievements: a public option at the least, a a green economy that produces millions of jobs, free vaccines for all, and fixing immigration. Most of these priorities poll very well. Yes, it doesn’t matter because the noise machine will say free vaccines are tyrrany, but reality is that those messages have limited spread. If we turn out our base, and don’t alienate just enough people, we win.
I admit I should have stopped reading when I saw the words “Jeff Flake” but I’m a bit slow today so I stopped when I got to the lie about the Republicans cooperating.
Solid analysis, as usual. Any coalition that includes everyone from Bill Kristol & John Kasich to Ilhan Omar and Elizabeth Warren is unstable…*and* it’s the kind of coalition that’s needed to soundly defeat the Trumpist Republican party.
As for governing, in part *because* of Biden’s years in the Senate and White House there’s already a faction of Democrats (especially in the Senate) who are disposed—both personally, politically, and ideologically—to “protect” Biden from the extremes of the progressive wish list.
That said, the damage from the last decade+ of Republican obstructionism means that even the most “moderate” versions of economic, health care, climate change, and immigration legislation will, of necessity, be large and impactful (and thus open Democrats to campaign attacks that will make 2010 look like a walk in the park).
Another thought: By 2021 roughly half of the House Republican caucus will be Trumpists—members who’ve been elected since 2016. A minority Republican party is a more reactionary Republican party…with fewer members willing to or with any self-interest in participating in bipartisan governance. (Imagine a Senate without Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, Lindsey Graham. Now, after removing the smile from your Democratic face, who are the centrist Republicans left to cut a deal with? Hard to think of anyone, right?)
This is probably an argument for eliminating the filibuster. Even if there’s a landslide and Dems emerge with, say, 55 Senate seats, the amount of negotiation and compromise needed to piece together 5 Republican votes with a unanimous Democratic caucus on every vote is virtually unimaginable.
You know, one way to end this sort of need to compromise each election cycle would be to fix the structural imbalances. Start with voting rights bill. End gerrymandering. Get rid of the filibuster, add PR and DC as states (assuming they want to be states). Add new justices to the SC to restore the balance. And abolish the EC and move to popular vote.
This will be seemingly unpopular for a large portion of the country, but if done right, then it will force conservatives to play on a more level playing field, where they’d lose every time due to the unpopularity of their proposals.