I read an interesting essay in Forbes recently, penned by a former Republican intern, donor, operative and pro-life blogger from Texas named Chris Ladd. The premise of his piece is that southern conservatives have always behaved as a kind of third party crammed uncomfortably into a two-party system. I found the following formulation pretty insightful:
If you have formed a perfect society in terms of culture, race, and religion, there is no such thing as “progress.” Progress is perversion, since every change is a descent from the ideal. Preserving their unique racial and religious order inside a hostile liberal democracy depends on the jealous protection of each state’s individual sovereignty.
This observation struck me as especially adept because I had also been reading extensively about the presidency of Andrew Jackson and his battles with vice-president John Calhoun. Those two gentlemen, one from Tennessee and the other from South Carolina, offered up two vastly different conceptions of the Constitution, but not different enough to keep them from both being Democrats. Jackson fervently believed in states’ rights, but not to the point that he would tolerate them ignoring federal law. His great regret in later life is that he had not hanged Calhoun as a traitor over the nullification crisis.
This history is a reminder that the origin story of the Democratic Party isn’t a happy one and that the South has always been a one-party region. It also highlights that any sentiment that we used to be more civil about our political disagreements is vastly overblown. In the Jackson Era, the president and vice-president wanted to murder each other over tariff policy and it caused a national crisis.
Keeping this in mind, it’s easier to understand where Joe Biden is coming from when he cites his early Senate relationships with two segregationists as an example of how it’s possible to bridge seemingly unspannable political gaps.
Speaking at a fund-raiser at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City, Mr. Biden, 76, stressed the need to “be able to reach consensus under our system,” and cast his decades in the Senate as a time of relative comity. His remarks come as some in his party say that Mr. Biden is too focused on overtures to the right as he seeks the Democratic presidential nomination.
At the event, Mr. Biden noted that he served with the late Senators James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia, both Democrats who were staunch opponents of desegregation. Mr. Eastland was the powerful chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee when Mr. Biden entered the chamber in 1973.
“I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” Mr. Biden said, slipping briefly into a Southern accent, according to a pool report from the fund-raiser. “He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son.’”
He called Mr. Talmadge “one of the meanest guys I ever knew, you go down the list of all these guys.”
“Well guess what?” Mr. Biden continued. “At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”
Herman Talmadge’s ex-wives gave plenty of supporting evidence to the opinion that the former senator from Georgia was a mean guy, but one thing Biden is glossing over is that he and Talmadge were still members of the same party. That’s the primary reason Biden was able to work with him in a constructive way.
So long as the segregationists were still Democrats, Congress was able to function and there was enough ideological overlap between the two parties to allow for some civility. I’m sure Biden was able to work with Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama in the 1980’s when Shelby was a Democrat. He didn’t get much cooperation from him after Shelby became a Republican in 1994. I don’t recall Shelby lifting a finger to help the Obama-Biden administration.
Some people are expressing shock or disapproval that Biden would talk about segregationists in anything other than a disapproving tone, but that’s a misinterpretation of the point he was trying to make. His comments deserve to be critiqued but not for that reason.
He was using them as examples of how it used to be possible to hammer out deals even with people you strongly disagree with or even see as morally reprehensible. He wasn’t praising their civility but only trying to express what ought to be achievable even in our presently divided country. In trying to place a large distance between himself and Sens. Eastland and Talmadge he may also have been trying to compensate for some of his less-then-fully-enlightened views on racial issues in the early part of his Senate career.
Biden being Biden, he didn’t realize that his comments would be received in a quite different light by the current base of the Democratic Party. Few Democrats today see civil relationships with segregationists as a plus, even if it smooths the way for a functional Congress that can pay its bills on time.
The real problem with Biden’s worldview isn’t that he’s misjudged the Democratic electorate, nor that his re-telling of history is too rose-colored, but that he’s most likely wrong about what is possible.
When the Democratic Party was divided between north and south, they could hash out most of their internal disagreements and keep the country’s lights on. But now that the two parties are divided north and south, this is no longer a fraternal and often amicable dispute. Senators Eastland and Talmadge needed people like Joe Biden in order to maintain themselves in the majority and keep their committee gavels. Today, the senators from Mississippi and Georgia have no such use for the current senators from Delaware.
Remember: “If you have formed a perfect society in terms of culture, race, and religion, there is no such thing as ‘progress.’ Progress is perversion, since every change is a descent from the ideal.”
The current Republican Party is a southern party. They are waging a war against immigration and secularism because they do not want to see change in what they perceive as “a perfect society.” When these same people were Democrats, they fought to preserve slavery and Jim Crow, but now they are outside the tent pissing in, and getting them to work civilly or constructively with progressive reformers is a fool’s errand.
Biden either doesn’t understand this or doesn’t want to believe it, but he’s encountering skepticism for a very good reason. What he’s saying strikes many as delusional.
On the other hand, I think most voters probably share his desire that we get back to the old days, at least with respect to having a functional Congress. From a strictly political point of view, Biden’s position is a probably a winner in a general election. People want someone who will at least try to bridge our divides. They won’t reward him for failure though, and first he has to win the Democratic nomination. It seems at times like he’s taking the nomination for granted.
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When I first started reading this piece I was expecting to disagree with it, but this point is so important:
Yes, they do, but as you documented in the rest of your piece this cannot happen while the segregationist party is housed in the Republican Party as it is currently ideologically constituted. These issues divided the parties *internally* which reduced outward partisan polarization. Which means Democrats either make a home/accommodation for the segregationists again — which can’t happen and researchers of radical right/far right show in the long run doesn’t actually help left leaning coalitions — or begin to be honest with voters about what this means, for the country and for the Republican Party. Cynically, Biden’s comments read as winks and nods that he can get things done because he’s white. It’s a fair reading of what he’s saying, even if it’s not the only one.
I hear Biden’s campaign slogan is;
“Ya, but Texas will vote for me.”
Is it though? Rule number one about winning a general election is that you have to have your base come out to vote for you. How many Democrats have you heard groaning at the comments Biden made, and this isn’t even the first time this has happened.
I know that most of us commenting on political blogs are virtually certain to vote, but the simple fact is that lots of people won’t. Turnout in presidential years rarely gets above 60%. Every time a candidate makes a stupid remark like this, imagine a few hundred thousand people deciding he just isn’t worth the trouble to get to the polls for.
I have yet to see a solid case for Joe Biden to be the Democratic nominee, beyond the ‘electability’ one, which I think is entirely specious. Has anyone else?
The people who hate Trump are going to turn out to vote no matter what. interest in the election already exceeds 2012-2016. Donations are high. Volunteers are high. Every metric points to high turnout. Biden’s comments probably win him some white non-college voters in Wisconsin and Michigan. The goodwill won’t last forever, though.
However, Biden’s overall point of “come together to get stuff done” is what non-political people of all stripes talk about, especially Democratically leaning constituencies. I don’t think it hurts him (yet) but it’s a symptom of a bigger problem which is that Joe is both lazy and lacks self-control. I’m also on the record (on here) that whoever the 18-34 year olds choose is who the best suited nominee is. Biden doesn’t fit that bill. Democratic campaigns are run and organized by young people. Gonna be pretty demoralizing to constantly have to defend this shit, and eventually many of them won’t and will leave the campaign.
Thanks for pointing out the utter inapplicability of Uncle Joe’s analogy to his (ancient) “civil” relationships with (Dem) segregationists, and that almost 50 years ago. Highly relevant, Uncle Joe. Also, too, a wonderful boast: “By gum, back in the day, we could work with racists!” Exactly the sort of thing the Dem primary voter wants to hear, circa 2020.
At this point in what promises to be the goddam longest prez campaign in history, Uncle Joe’s chatter about the Happy Days of the Olde Tyme Senate (“we were…civil!”) and imagining Gravedigger McConnell & Pals straining at the leash to be co-operative with Dems if not for the evil Trumper(!) is just so much hot air. At best this blather confirms simple-minded Pollanna-ism and distracts primary voters from the paucity of actual policies Uncle Joe wants to enact; at worst it reveals that he is already delusional at 75.
The idea that this slow-witted 70s Guy will be the standard bearer for opposing plutocracy and corpocracy, ending the Second Gilded Age and ushering in a second Progressive Era is so utterly ridiculous that even to utter the idea refutes it. Hell, he sounds more like the kind of Dem prez that would have an acrimonious relationship with a Dem Congress, siding with his Repub buds to preserve the holy status quo against actual progressives! And to think that we are months and months and months away from even beginning any voting on the matter. Is there a way to go into suspended animation?
Couldn’t agree more. Joe’s time has passed.
Booker is calling for an apology from Biden. What did Joe expect?
I don’t necessarily blame Booker for aiming at an easy target, but Biden should only apologize for making a bad argument.
I think you’re making a pretty big assumption here about his intent and I’m long past the days of trying to parse what any politician “really meant to say”. Biden’s comment is offensive on many levels beyond the literal meaning of his words, not the least of which is what Joe was “getting done” when he was making deals with James Eastland.
His intent is not hard to discern if you’re following along. The dispute is over whether or not to do away with the filibuster. Some say it’s a prerequisite for getting things done. Biden disputes that. Sanders disputes that. Warren opposes them.
Biden is talking about how to get things done in the Senate when you have to rely on assholes. The assholes used to be in his own party and the chairmen of his own committees, but he found a way to work through and around that problem.
People are making it sound like he was praising their civility. He was saying being civil can go a long way in the Senate, but he wasn’t saying these guys were great guys. In Talmadge’s case, he said he was one of the meanest people he ever met.
Come on!! You damn well know what deals Biden is talking about. He was taking the segregationists side on busing!!!! Is that the deals you like being cut? Anyway, what makes you think Yertle the Turtle will cut deals with Biden in 2021? He won’t!!
The problem is that Biden clearly didn’t even realize the statement was a problem until he started getting flack for it.
Honestly, how stupid do you have to be to utter the words “He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son,”. He didn’t call you ‘boy’ because you’re white, Joe.
We’ve watched him in action for 40+ years. He’s not too bright. Also, tone deaf.
Now Biden is demanding an apology from Booker. Talk about not bright and tone deaf. The white guy bragging about his past relationships with racists is demanding an apology from the black guy that called him out on it.
That’s taking ‘tone deaf’ to a new level of whiteness.
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“Obviously he wasn’t racist towards me, but he was incredibly condescending.” Fixed that for you, Joe.
Have seen reports that that quote is a variation from past statements (e.g., 2017) with ‘Senator’ where he said ‘boy’ this time (which might partially explain why he seemed surprised by the backlash, as if he hadn’t said anything new here?). Still, not getting that that ‘boy’ usage is fraught with risk of — or outright — offensiveness . . . especially in the context of recounting how well and civilly you used to cooperate with racist, segregationist Lost-Cause Dems to “get stuff done” . . . the mind boggles.
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I’ve been reading Ladd’s blog, which at first was GOPLifer, and has become Political Orphans, for about 5 years now. If Ladd’s version of the Republican party was the actual Republican party, our country would be doing just fine, at least in terms of functioning as a country. His views on a lot of issues are definitely conservative, but not radical, right-wing authoritarian conservative. i.e. a classic Rockefeller Republican take on things.
I know that I’ve recommended his blog in the past, here, but I’ll give a link to it, because his writing is good, and he often delves into deep pieces that cover multiple blog posts.
As a short summary, he knows that we have to elect Democrats, but he isn’t going to call himself a Democrat, which is fine with me, since he’s at least acknowledged that it’s the Republican party that has broken this country. He used to be an active member of his local Republican party in Illinois, but resigned once it became clear that Strongman Trump was going to get the nomination.
Fun tidbit, at least for me. He had a wager with his readers about picking when Strongman Trump’s campaign would finally falter and fold. I won, predicting that his campaign would only end on November 9th 2016, the day after the election. I made the prediction in July of 2015.
Anyway, here’s a link: https://www.politicalorphans.com/
Like here, the blog posts are amazing, and the commentary is well worth reading. Dig through it when you have a few minutes, and bookmark it. He typically posts every few days.
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Joe Biden was in the Senate in the 1990’s when Newt Gingrich became one of the biggest Republican flame throwers and Bill Clinton was impeached. It’s just intensified since then. If Biden is implying that he can fix this impasse because of his years of relative comity in the Senate, he is engaging in a form of false advertising. (However, he may not even recognize it as such.)
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Well, trying to work across the aisle sure didn’t work for Obama, and the distance and hostility between the parties since then have only gotten worse. I don’t see why Joe thinks he’ll do any better then Obama did.
It seems important to note that JOE BIDEN was picked by Obama under the theory that he could work across the aisle with the Republicans in the House and Senate.
So Obama’s failings on this point are Joe Biden’s failings and evidence that he cannot, in fact, succeed while Mitch McConnell is the Republican leader.
I think he hopes to do as well as Obama did on Election Day.
Biden should have gone with something like this:
“Trump and his pals are even worse than the Dixiecrats I had to work with when I started out. Those guys were racists, but at least they knew how to legislate. These clowns are building concentration camps, and they can’t even spell.”
There’s a campaign that needs you. Maybe you should apply.
Every D contender has to have an answer to, “How will you get anything done with McConnell still Majority Leader?” This is Biden’s answer. Does he believe it? I doubt it. Will it get him nominated? I don’t know, but he’s gotta try something.
This is the stuff you can’t read anywhere else. Thanks.
One thing Biden appears to be trying to say is a bit of world-as-it-is political wisdom that organizers often summarize as “No permanent enemies, no permanent allies, just permanent interests”.
The problem is, as Longman and others here have pointed out, Biden appears not to recognize that in the world-as-it-is today, Biden (specifically, center-left Democrats generally) has nothing to offer that southern conservatives want. And without anything to offer, there’s no basis for being allies and “getting stuff done”.
That means center-left Democrats (and the relative handful of center-right/never Trump Republicans) in the 2020s will have to go somewhere else to find/create a governing majority to “get stuff done”.
The outlines of that coalition already exist. One piece is in the mostly suburban districts that propelled the 2018 “blue wave” of House victories. Another is rebuilding competitiveness in rural/conservative districts (h/t to Longman and all at Washington Monthly who’ve been hammering away at this for a few years now, and have been arguing for the centrality of an anti-monopoly politics). The base is what it is now: women of color and their allies.
That then implies a robust democracy agenda: statehood for DC & Puerto Rico, eliminate the Senate filibuster, mandatory automatic voter registration, fast-track (since nativists have already delayed it for nearly two decades) citizenship for longterm undocumented residents, etc.
Which in turn changes the political calculus: with 20 million or so additional voters nationally, and 2/3 or so of the Democrats, southern conservatives will lose (a lot of) power. After some time in the wilderness, presumably they’ll do a conservative version of what Democrats have done over the last 60 years—piece together a new coalition and agenda that gives them a shot at regaining power.
The problem for Biden is that the point he did make is that he wants to return to the “good old days” of Joe Biden’s youth. When he could get together and make deals with Southern racists and head out for a beer with them after work.
Keep in mind, he was talking about Democrats making deals with Democrats in an era when the party had large, sometimes filibuster-proof majorities. It was also an era of huge civil unrest in which women and minorities had almost no representation in Government.
It’s not an era that most modern Democrats have any interest in returning to.
In fact, Biden’s whole campaign theme, returning to a Golden Age of American greatness, is a poor echo of Donald Trump’s.
And putting aside differences to work closely with white nationalists to “get things done” – That’s the bargain the Republican party made in 2016.
There’s a reason that the only true defense of Biden came from Lindsay Graham.
Uncle Joe: “Make America Civil Again!” Um…Joe….
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