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Biden’s Myth of Bipartisanship Takes a Hit
In January, Joe Biden assumed the leadership of a nation in disarray. On Donald Trump’s watch, the US had struggled for nearly a year to come to terms with a pandemic that disrupted not just the economy, but people’s lives and relationships. Last summer, an unprecedented protest movement against the brutal treatment of black Americans rivaled the COVID-19 pandemic for headlines. These parallel events underlined deep contradictions that have long existed in the social fabric. As a parting gesture, Trump chose to put on display the apparently irreparable division of the body politic by encouraging a mob to assault Congress as it prepared to validate his election loss.
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Those particular events were dramatic enough. But in the background lay other pressing issues. First among them was the rapid decline of the health of the planet due to anthropogenic climate change. At the same time, the effects of wealth and income disparity became ever more visible inside the US and across the globe. In the background was the persistence of wars, terrorism and global instability accompanied by a very real nuclear threat, aggravated by powerful nations’ obsession with producing increasingly sophisticated weaponry. Arms sales had become essential for the economies of Western nations, exacerbating instability in entire regions of the world. Not only the American people but also the global population were becoming increasingly aware of the stakes implied by these converging issues. In this context, expectations grew for Biden’s FDR-style change in American politics. Not that he would challenge the existing order, but that he would for once address the real issues.
President Biden thus entered the White House with an implicit mission to restore a semblance of order, whatever that meant. Observers quickly discovered that today’s version of US democracy entertains two possible approaches to restoring order. The first, which to many people appears logical, requires assessing the nature of the crises and promoting policies designed specifically to address the perceived causes. The second is clearly less logical but represents a long-standing tradition a seasoned politician such as Joe Biden fully understood. It consists of weighing the opinions and interests of the two parties that share power and devising solutions that do not threaten their specific interests. It also implies relegating the needs and desires of the nation’s population to a secondary position.
Biden quickly put his well-honed skills to work. The New York Times describes the dramatic scene in which he “strode to the cameras on the White House driveway on [June 24], flanked by an equal number of Democratic and Republican lawmakers, to proudly announce an overall infrastructure agreement totaling $1.2 trillion over eight years that could cement his legacy as a bipartisan deal maker.”
Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Bipartisan:
A descriptive term for any agreement between the two dominant parties designed to buttress the status quo, bipartisanship becoming a necessary ingredient when the status quo itself has become exceptionally dysfunctional, built on policies that are unpopular with the majority of the electorate but considered vital to the preservation of donor support by the political class
Contextual Note
Progressive Democrats wasted no time expressing their displeasure with a bill that fails to address even the most tepid of Biden’s campaign promises concerning the real problems the nation was facing. Emboldened by his belief in his own bipartisan superpowers and wishing to appease progressives, Biden explained, in response to a question from the press, his commitment to pushing through another bill that would deal with those issues. He even promised to reject the bipartisan version he had just negotiated if it was not accompanied by the partisan version. The Times commented: “It may not seem like much, but it was enough to upend Mr. Biden’s proud bipartisan moment.” Pride certainly appears to be a more powerful motivator for the president than problem-solving.
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Revealing the strategy that would have had a chance of working only if left unmentioned, Biden announced, “if this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it.” This set off a firestorm among his bipartisan partners, who judged they had been taken for a ride. Over the next 24 hours, Biden had to find a way of walking back his imprudent remarks. He dutifully promised to back the original bill with no conditions, and peace was restored. Republicans now have a clear path to devise ways of canceling the threat of action being taken on the issues that matter.
There is still a small chance Biden could succeed by mobilizing every member of the Democratic Party to pass the “real” infrastructure bill through reconciliation. But the odds seem rather long. This leaves some observers wondering whether the gaffe was inadvertent. Perhaps Biden’s real bipartisan aim was to provide his opponents with a pretext for ensuring that the second bill never gets passed.
“The drama does not appear to have sunk the deal,” The Times writes reassuringly, “but Mr. Biden admitted that his comments on Thursday left ‘the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to.’” That was ‘certainly not my intent,’ he added.” This glib explanation of the confusion may sum up the public’s perception of the first months of the Biden presidency. There is a thick fog around his intent.
Politico reports that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell criticized accused Biden of “‘completely caving’ to the party’s left wing and has repeatedly emphasized his commitment to derailing Biden‘s progressive agenda.” What this means is that the nation must prepare for a direct confrontation between the ideologies of the two parties, the very opposite of bipartisan government. The logic has come full circle, as often happens these days in Washington.
Historical Note
The myth of bipartisanship in US politics is relatively new. It is linked to the emergence a century ago of a binary political system in which only two dominant parties could legitimately claim the right to govern. It took new meaning in recent decades once the parties had settled into their stable ideological identities. For the first two-thirds of the 20th century, the Democratic Party drew its capacity to govern from its force as a coalition of Northern liberals and Southern segregationist Dixiecrats. The Republicans had their own two factions: Northeastern liberals and heartland conservatives. In such circumstances, bipartisanship was both an inevitable ingredient of almost all legislation and a meaningless concept. Once the Democrats became “the liberals” and the Republicans “the conservatives,” bipartisanship would become a real challenge.
Joe Biden entered Congress at a time when the old bipartisanship was fading but not yet deceased. At one point, progressives excoriated Biden for expressing his nostalgia for the days when he collaborated respectfully with white supremacists. The progressives were right in their reproach, but not for the moral reasons they cited. Rather for what it indicates about Biden’s inability to dissociate himself from an irrelevant past. He still hasn’t adapted to today’s very different reality.
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.custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}The idea of bipartisanship may be the central myth of the Biden presidency. Conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans have fallen in love with it and revere Biden for his commitment to it. Senator Mark Warner, a conservative Democrat, lauded Biden’s successful negotiation in these terms: “The message it sends to the American people, and also to our friends and adversaries around the world, is so important. In a post-Jan. 6 world, it shows that people who come from different political views can still come together on national priorities.” The fiasco that followed Biden’s threat to veto his own bill demonstrates the absurdity of this maudlin sentiment.
Despite persistent public quarrels about budgets and taxation required to maintain the conservative or liberal label of the two parties, bipartisanship has actually been the norm in recent decades. And it is a destructive norm. Critiquing Biden’s brazenly illegal bombing this weekend of Iraq and Syria, Glenn Greenwald makes this historical point: “This has continued for close to two full decades now because the establishment wings of both parties support it. Neither of them believes in the Constitution or the rule of law, nor do they care in the slightest about the interests of anyone other than the large corporate sectors that fund the establishment wings of both parties.”
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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‘He’s phoning it in’: why Biden is losing the voting rights fight
For months, Biden and other Democrats have raised alarm about efforts to restrict the vote. Republicans have succeeded nonetheless.Since January, Republican lawmakers in Georgia, Florida, Iowa, Arkansas and Montana have all enacted new legislation that impose new barriers to voting. The successful Republican filibuster this week – which stalled the sweeping voting rights legislation, the For the People Act – only underscored how Democrats have failed to stop GOP efforts to curtail the vote.Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterDemocrats have pledged the fight for voting rights is far from over, but activists told the Guardian it did not feel like Biden and Democrats were meeting the moment and treating the fight for voting rights with the urgency it deserved. “They’re checking the boxes,” said Cliff Albright, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter, an advocacy group that is focused on mobilizing Black voters. “They’re not acting like we are facing an existential crisis. That’s the problem. It’s from the top down,” added Albright, who is currently on a multi-state bus tour across the south to raise awareness about the need for voting protections.After the bill stalled this week, the White House this week made a clear escalation of its efforts on voting rights. Biden announced he is embarking on a nationwide voting rights tour to highlight the threat of new GOP laws. “I’m going to be going around the country, making the case to the American people that this isn’t just about [showing identification] or being able to give someone water in line, this is about who is able to judge whether your vote gets counted,” he said at the White House on Thursday.The justice department also announced Friday that it was filing a major voting rights case challenging a sweeping new voting law in Georgia, one of the biggest voting cases the department has filed in recent years.The suit is a “step in the right direction,” said Albright, and would signal to other states that efforts to restrict voter access would not be tolerated. But Democrats have a narrow window to pass legislation. In August, state lawmakers will begin the once-per-decade process of redrawing US House and other state legislative districts, a procedure Republicans are poised to use to wipe out Democrats’ majority in the US House. The For the People Act would curb excessive manipulation of district lines for partisan gain, and if it isn’t in place by August, Republicans would be free to freely gerrymander districts.“The Republicans, they’re putting everything to stop it. I need that to be matched with the same kind of passion and commitment and to be vocal,” said LaTosha Brown, the other co-founder of Black Voters Matter. “I have not seen the kind of response that makes me believe they’re seeing this as a do-or-die moment for American democracy.”The problem isn’t that Biden isn’t paying attention, the activists say. The president issued a series of modest, but potentially consequential, executive orders expanding voting rights in March. He has appointed some of the country’s top voting rights lawyers to the upper echelons of the Justice Department, which recently announced it was doubling the number of attorneys focused on voting rights issues. And he has a White House adviser focused on voting rights.Biden has also been unsparing in his criticism of Republican efforts to make it harder to vote, ripping the efforts as “sick,” “un-American,” and “Jim Crow in the 21st century.”Still, some think Biden so far has failed to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to treat the issue as an emergency, said Ezra Levin, the founder of Indivisible, a progressive grassroots group.“He’s phoning it in,” Levin said. “We’ll see what the public actions look like. We’ll see how overwhelming the campaign is. So far we’ve seen basically no action, so any action is an improvement.”While the White House has highlighted its public commitment to voting rights, some advisers privately don’t think the GOP-backed rules will be as big a boon to Republicans as some fear, according to The Atlantic. Advisers privately see infrastructure as a better political winning issue for Biden, the Associated Press reported.“Recently, I’ve been encouraged to see him name voting rights as a priority, but at this point, words simply aren’t enough. We have heard more about a watered-down, bipartisan infrastructure bill than we have about how the White House will help House Democrats save our ailing democracy,” Mondaire Jones, a Democratic congressman from New York, said in a statement.“So we need action with the urgency that this crisis demands.”Brown, the Black Voters Matter activist, said Biden and Democrats in Washington should emulate Texas Democrats, who last month walked out of the state legislature, denying GOP lawmakers a quorum needed to pass legislation. Even though the legislature will reconvene in a special session next month and likely ultimately pass the bill, Republicans have already walked back some of the most damaging provisions. The maneuver also offered a jolt of energy and a symbolic win for Democrats after months.Biden has shown some flashes of upping the stakes. In April, he caught many off guard when he endorsed the idea of Major League Baseball moving its All-Star Game out of Atlanta in response to Georgia’s new voting law. MLB did just that days later, offering some of the firmest consequences to Republicans to date for a voting law.Earlier this month, Biden also appeared to fire a shot at two moderate Democrats in the senate, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, two of the staunchest defenders of the filibuster, saying there were “two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends.” The White House quickly walked back the comments, saying Biden was not talking about the two senators.But when Biden gave a speech to Congress earlier this year, he only mentioned voting rights briefly, towards the end of his remarks. “If I’m your opposition, and I tell you something’s important to me, and then I only give it 30 seconds, how seriously are you going to take me?,” Albright said.If Biden and Democrats were ultimately unable to pass voting rights legislation, Brown said, it would be “devastating” to Black voters, who not only played a big role in getting Biden to the White House, but also helped Democrats flip two Georgia US senate seats in January.“The message that it sends is that they’re not willing to go hard to deliver the things that we were expecting when we went out to vote for them and we risked our lives to do so,” Albright said. “The message that they’re sending is that they’re OK with a little bit of Jim Crow.” More
The Issue of Abortion Is a Litmus Test for the American Catholic Church
Ignoring warnings from Pope Francis and the Vatican, US Catholic bishops earlier this month overwhelmingly approved drafting guidance that would deny the rite of communion to public officials who do not support the church’s opposition to abortion. The decision was seen as the church’s most public rebuke yet of US President Joe Biden, only the second Catholic to occupy the White House. A drafting committee will convene to write the guidance and present a draft to the bishops for a formal vote in November.
The sacrament of communion, or Holy Eucharist, lies at the core of the Catholic faith. The communion host, bread, is viewed as the actual body of Jesus upon consecration by the priest during Mass. Receiving it is considered a sign of a believer’s state of grace. Receipt of communion is de rigueur and almost automatic for any Catholic attending Mass. Typically, only non-Catholics and excommunicated Catholics would be formally denied communion, though those who consider themselves not in a state of grace, i.e., guilty of a serious sin, are not supposed to receive it. Abortion, among others, is considered a grievous sin.
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Joe Biden is an observant Roman Catholic, having grown up and been educated in the church. He regularly attends Sunday Mass and even periodic daily services, and receives communion, which has never been denied him previously. He often quotes from the Bible and church hymns in his political remarks and is known to frequently recite the rosary, which he carries with him in his pocket.
Biden has been clear on his position on abortion. While accepting the teachings of the church, he has said that he will not impose his personal view on others and, therefore, supports a woman’s right to choose. It is precisely that position that has riled American bishops, all of whom have begun to view the issue as a litmus test for Catholicism.
Losing Their Hold
In America, the Catholic Church has seen a steady erosion of adherents to its teachings on a host of moral issues, most involving the treatment and role of sex and gender in everyday life, and abortion. American Catholics, like their non-Catholic counterparts, are all over the moral map. While practicing or observant Catholics are more likely to follow church teachings on these matters, even they have shown an independent streak by making decisions in their lives at odds with traditional Catholic dogma.
For example, the church officially opposes the use of artificial contraception, yet 99% of US Catholic women use some form of artificial birth control, according to a recent Guttmacher Institute poll. This compares with 99.6% of women with no religious affiliation, 99.4% of mainline Protestant women, 99.3% of evangelical Protestants and 95.7% with other religious connections. While this is universally known among Catholics, the church leadership nowadays usually — and wisely — avoids the subject. Moreover, there is no movement to deny communion to either these women or those who support their right to choose contraception.
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The church sees its authority eroding elsewhere as well. Surveys suggest that Catholics favor allowing to divorce and remarry, and divorced Catholics who remarry to receive communion. Since 2011, a majority of Catholics have supported gay marriage, up to 69% today. Sixty percent support the ordination of women, and 62% think that priests should be able to marry.
On the controversial subject of abortion, a clear majority (56%) of Catholics support its legalization. The figure may be deceptive, however. Among Catholics who attend Mass regularly, opposition to abortion is significantly higher. Nevertheless, two-thirds of Catholics oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case in which the US Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution protects a woman’s right to choose an abortion.
On the specific issue before the American bishops, 67% of Catholics oppose denying communion to Biden for his views on abortion. Worth noting, however, is that among Catholics who identify as Democrat or Democrat-leaning, 87% oppose such a ruling, while only 44% who identify as Republican or Republican-leaning do so.
Immutable Catholicism
All of this lends weight to the call among a growing majority of American Catholics for changes in their church’s policies and teachings. Yet the Catholic Church is anything but a democracy. So, Catholics are voting not only with their feet but also their dollars, either leaving the church or simply refusing to support it with their contributions. Those who strongly identify as Catholic have declined from 46% in 1974 to just 27% in 2017. Regular Sunday Mass attendance among Catholics has also fallen, from nearly 50% in 1974 to about 25% in 2012.
These numbers tell some but not all of the story behind the church’s decline in the US. From 1970 to 2020, the number of priests in the US fell by 40%, not surprising given that vocations draw heavily from the church’s school system, which has also suffered declining numbers. Catholic schools are closing across the country, with almost 50% fewer elementary schools and 40% fewer secondary schools in 2020 than in 1970. Catholic parishes, which typically support Catholic schools, have fallen by 15% since 1990.
With declining membership and Mass attendance have come decreasing church collections. Also, Catholics see withholding contributions as the only way to voice their opposition to church policies. The child sex abuse scandal that has wracked the church for the last 20 years has also provoked considerable outrage among Catholics of all political persuasions, especially as diocese after diocese pays tens of millions in legal settlements of child abuse cases nationwide, dating back to the 1950s. Many believe the church has yet to provide a full accounting of the priests’ behavior and of the senior clerics who tolerated it.
It is this independent thought and attendant behavior that has conservative Catholic bishops worried. They fear the steady decline of Catholicism in America into the same fate as Protestantism, a cafeteria-style buffet of moral and theological offerings and teachings from which members may pick and choose. For an organization accustomed to obedience and acceptance, it is tantamount to a revolution. They have chosen to confront that revolution on the abortion battlefront.
Train Wreck or Track Change?
Though he may not have sought the position, Joe Biden represents the growing numbers of American Catholics — and most definitely Americans in general — who wish to define a defensible middle ground on abortion, a chronically neuralgically contentious issue in the US. The conservative Catholic bishops will have none of it, rather drawing a clear line brooking no viable middle ground.
In doing so, they’ve formally submitted the church to America’s culture wars that infect so many segments of polity and society. Even more importantly for the church, these bishops threaten to divide the US institution. On one track, there is the conservative movement, a compliant core that is faithful to all the church’s teachings and dogma, intolerant of any deviation, whether on abortion, married priests, contraception, gay marriage, etc. On another track, there is a more liberal version of the church, focusing on its historic mission of social justice, immigration, climate change and poverty elimination but also more tolerant of diverse views on sex and morality.
Pope Francis unquestionably knows this and is trying to avoid what may be inevitable, especially as his American bishops appear so eager for the confrontation and consequent division. Following the bishops’ vote, he issued no comment. The Vatican asserted that he had already spoken on his opposition to the action. Clearly, however, their decision flouted his position and amounts to no less than a direct challenge to the pope and his authority, a rarity in recent church history.
Francis and the Vatican appear to be relying on the ultimate failure of the bishops’ initiative. It would require unanimous approval by the Conference of Bishops or at least two-thirds approval followed by the pope’s consent. The likelihood of either is microscopically slim.
The bishops’ action is more than one of merely trying to force dogmatic adherence to church teachings. It is a barely veiled challenge to this pope whom they’ve viewed as out of step with tradition and steering the church down a dangerous path of diluting the faith. Even if their measure fails, they will have established themselves as an alternative voice of the Catholic faith, thereby condemning Catholics across the country to a church divided between two versions of Jesus’ “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.”
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Republicans will ‘move forward’ on infrastructure after Biden veto threat
A lead Republican negotiator has welcomed Joe Biden’s withdrawal of his threat to veto a $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill unless a separate Democratic spending plan also passes Congress.Senator Rob Portman of Ohio said on Sunday he and fellow Republicans were “blindsided” by Biden’s comment, which the president made on Thursday after he and the senators announced a rare bipartisan compromise on a measure to fix roads, bridges and ports.“I was very glad to see the president clarify his remarks because it was inconsistent with everything that we had been told all along the way,” Portman told ABC’s This Week.Moments after announcing the deal, Biden appeared to put it in jeopardy by saying it would have to move “in tandem” with a larger bill that includes a host of Democratic priorities and which he hopes to pass along party lines.Biden said of the infrastructure bill on Thursday: “If this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it.”The comments put party pressure on the 11 Republicans in the group of 21 senators who endorsed the infrastructure package. One Republican, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, told Politico Biden had made his group of senators look like “fucking idiots”.Biden issued a statement on Saturday that said he had “created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent … The bottom line is this. I gave my word to support the infrastructure plan and that is what I intend to do.”The White House said Biden would tour the US to promote the plan, starting in Wisconsin on Tuesday.“We were glad to see them disconnected and now we can move forward,” Portman said.A key Democrat, the West Virginia centrist Joe Manchin, told ABC he believed the bipartisan proposal could reach the 60 votes needed to become law.“This is the largest infrastructure package in the history of the United States of America,” Manchin said. “And there’s no doubt in my mind that [Biden] is anxious for this bill to pass and for him to sign it. And I look forward to being there when he does.”Manchin also appealed to progressives to support the bill as part of a process which will see Democrats attempt to pass via a simple majority a larger spending bill containing policy priorities opposed by Republicans.“I would hope that all my colleagues will look at [the deal] in the most positive light,” Manchin said. “They have a chance now to review it. It has got more in there for clean infrastructure, clean technology, clean energy technology than ever before, more money for bridges and roads since the interstate system was built, water, getting rid of our lead pipes. It’s connecting in broadband all over the nation, and especially in rural America, in rural West Virginia.”Another Republican, Mitt Romney of Utah, said he trusted Biden. He also delighted in needling Democrats over the separate spending package.“This is a bill which stands on its own,” Romney told CNN’s State of the Union about the infrastructure deal. “I am totally confident the president will sign up if it comes to his desk. The real challenge is whether the Democrats can get their act together and get it on his desk.”Romney said Republicans “are gonna support true infrastructure that doesn’t raise taxes”. Another Republican negotiator, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, told NBC’s Meet the Press he thought the minority leader Mitch McConnell, “will be for it, if it continues to come together as it is”.But, Romney, said, “Democrats want to do a lot of other things and I think they’re the ones that are having a hard time deciding how to proceed.”A leading House progressive, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, told NBC it was “very important for the president to know that … the Democratic caucus is here to ensure that he doesn’t fail.“And we’re here to make sure that he is successful in making sure that we do have a larger infrastructure plan. And the fact of the matter is that while we can welcome this work and welcome collaboration with Republicans … that doesn’t mean that the president should be limited by Republicans, particularly when we have a House majority, we have 50 Democratic senators and we have the White House.“I believe that we can make sure that [Biden] is successful in executing a strong agenda for working families.” More
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White House seeks to put infrastructure deal back on track after Biden blunder
The White House scrambled to put Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure deal back on track on Saturday, after Republican senators balked at his surprise demand to pair the nearly $1tn plan with an even bigger investment package covering progressive policy priorities, a demand the president made on Thursday even while hailing the deal.In a statement, Biden said he had “created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent”.Biden said on Thursday he would not sign a bill arising from the infrastructure deal unless it was accompanied by trillions more in spending in a separate measure passed with only Democratic votes.One senior Republican said the president had therefore made him and others look like “fucking idiots”.Tensions appeared to have cooled by Saturday, after White House negotiators Steve Ricchetti and Louisa Terrell assured senators Biden remained enthusiastic about the deal and would make a forceful public case for it in trips around the US.In his statement on Saturday afternoon, Biden said: “To be clear, our bipartisan agreement does not preclude Republicans from attempting to defeat my Families Plan. Likewise, they should have no objections to my devoted efforts to pass that Families Plan and other proposals in tandem. We will let the American people – and the Congress – decide.”He added: “The bottom line is this. I gave my word to support the infrastructure plan and that is what I intend to do.”A White House official subsequently said Biden’s first trip to promote the two plans would take him to Wisconsin on Tuesday.You look like a fucking idiot now. I don’t mind bipartisanship, but I’m not going to do a suicide missionThe controversy pointed to the difficult path ahead. The two measures were always expected to move together through Congress, the bipartisan infrastructure plan needing 60 votes while the second bill would advance under rules allowing for passage solely with majority Democratic votes.But what had been a celebratory moment for Biden and a group of 10 senators on Thursday was jolted by the president’s surprise insistence at a news conference that he would not sign the bipartisan bill unless Congress also passed his broader package. Some senators felt blindsided. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Politico: “If he’s gonna tie them together, he can forget it! I’m not doing that. That’s extortion! I’m not going to do that. The Dems are being told you can’t get your bipartisan work product passed unless you sign on to what the left wants, and I’m not playing that game.”Graham said “most Republicans” had not known about any linkage strategy.“There’s no way,” he said. “You look like a fucking idiot now. I don’t mind bipartisanship, but I’m not going to do a suicide mission.”On Friday the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said senators should not have been surprised. The two-track strategy, she said “hasn’t been a secret. He hasn’t said it quietly. He hasn’t even whispered it.”Psaki said Biden would stand by the commitment he made to the senators “and he expects they’ll do the same”.Nonetheless, the White House sought to allay concerns. In a call to the Democratic negotiator, Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, Biden said he looked forward to signing both bills, the White House said.The two-track strategy seeks to assure liberals the infrastructure deal won’t be the only one and that the companion package, now containing nearly $6tn in childcare, Medicare and other spending, remains on the table.The White House also wants to show centrist Democrats including Sinema and Joe Manchin of West Virginia it is working with Republicans before trying to push the broader package through Congress.On Saturday, Biden said: “Some Democrats have said they might oppose the infrastructure plan because it omits items they think are important. That’s a mistake in my view.“Some Republicans now say that they might oppose the infrastructure plan, because I am also trying to pass the American Families Plan. That is also a mistake in my view.“I intend to work hard to get both of them passed because our country needs both.”Speaking to the Associated Press on Friday, Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, the lead Republican negotiator, said: “My hope is that we’ll still get this done. It’s really good for America. Our infrastructure is in bad shape. It’s about time to get it done.”Ten Republicans will be needed to pass the bipartisan deal. While the senators in the group which negotiated with Democrats are among some of the more independent-minded lawmakers, it appears Republican leader Mitch McConnell could peel away support. More
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How Mitch McConnell has unified Republicans as a red wall against Biden’s agenda
It was a glimpse of Washington past. Beneath the vaulted ceiling and stained glass windows of the national cathedral, Joe Biden greeted Mitch McConnell and other senators in the pews, then offered a hymn to bipartisanship.“Empathy is the fuel of democracy,” the US president told mourners on Wednesday at the funeral of John Warner, a Republican senator he praised for working across the aisle. “The willingness to see each other as opponents, not as enemies. Above all, to see each other as fellow Americans even when we disagree.”It was a reminder on a grand stage of Biden’s strength as a consoler and uniter but left questions about his stomach as a fighter unanswered. Less than 24 hours earlier, McConnell had proved the nemesis of the president’s agenda by scuttling one of his top priorities.Fifty Republicans united to use a Senate procedure known as the filibuster to prevent debate on Democratic legislation to protect voting rights and safeguard American democracy. Biden, so compassionate from the pulpit, was accused by progressives of failing to use his bully pulpit, allowing McConnell to declare a cynical victory.The Senate minority leader had previously marshaled his red wall to halt a measure addressing the pay gap between men and women and stop a bipartisan effort to create a commission to investigate the deadly insurrection by Donald Trump supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January. He further warned that he would block a Biden supreme court nominee if a vacancy opened in 2024 – and perhaps even in 2023. Indeed, McConnell, 79, is offering a masterclass in the intransigence, wiliness and brutal obstructionism that he perfected in opposing the Barack Obama administration, earning nicknames such as “Dr No” and “Grim Reaper”.Ed Rogers, a political consultant who has known the Kentucky senator for 30 years, said: “Mitch McConnell is one of the few people in Washington that always has a plan. He isn’t making it up as he goes along.”For the obstructionist strategy to work, McConnell must keep in line a Senate caucus that ranges from moderate to far right and bitterly disagrees on some topics. Seven voted with Democrats to convict Trump at his impeachment trial in February; most remained fiercely loyal to the former president.McConnell himself observed recently: “100% of my focus is on standing up to this administration. What we have in the United States Senate is total unity from Susan Collins to Ted Cruz in opposition to what the new Biden administration is trying to do to this country.”Republican infighting will not end any time soon, but McConnell will have welcomed a recent shift in media attention to Biden’s own unwieldy coalition, which spans progressives such as Senator Bernie Sanders and conservatives such as Senator Joe Manchin.Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said: “Right now I think the Republicans are definitely the more united of the two parties and the Democrats at a certain point are going to boil over because while the first big bill [coronavirus relief] went fine, everything since has not.”In a Senate evenly divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, McConnell’s best friend is the filibuster, which can block bills that fail to muster 60 voters. He effectively has veto power over any Biden legislation that falls outside budget reconciliation, including gun control, police reform, voting rights and sex discrimination.Sabato added: “As long as they keep the filibuster, he’s guaranteed to succeed. I can’t find 10 Republicans who will break with McConnell on anything. They wouldn’t break with him on a weather report.”McConnell, whose memoir is titled The Long Game, has led his party in the Senate since 2007, sometimes leading the majority, at other times the minority. It might be argued that the latter role, blocking rather than building, finds him truly in his element.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “McConnell has always been superb at marshaling unanimity and he’s always been superb at what I analogise to playing black in chess: he’s very good at blocking initiative.”McConnell had to contend with the restive tea party during the Obama era. Now there is an even bigger challenge after his very public falling out with Trump, whom he said was “practically and morally responsible” for the mob violence on 6 January. The ex-president, who continues to dominate and and disrupt the party, restarts campaign rallies on Saturday.But Olsen, author of The Working Class Republican, suggests that the Grim Reaper and loose cannon of Trump can coexist. “It would be one thing if Trump were trying to actively provide guidance on issues in Congress but when Trump bothers to talk about anything other than his cauldron of grievances, he’s in line with what McConnell wants to do, which is oppose the Democrats’ agenda,” he explained.“So there’s no conflict. Trump is interested in politics and attention but not in policy. That gives McConnell a very free hand and, when Trump bothers to talk about policy at all, he’s not saying anything that other Republicans don’t agree with.”Biden claimed a bipartisan win on Thursday when a group of 10 senators reached agreement on a $1.2tn framework to invest in the country’s bridges, roads and other physical infrastructure. But McConnell again rained on the parade, warning that Democrats must guarantee not to unwind Republicans’ 2017 tax bill to pay for it. “That’s our one red line,” he told Fox News.His defenders point to bipartisan cooperation ranging from more than $3tn in pandemic relief last year to investments in science and technology for competition with China to the creation of a public holiday for Juneteenth. Yet his maneuvering to rally Senate Republicans to thwart the White House could prove more decisive in next year’s midterm elections.Antonia Ferrier, who was a spokesperson for McConnell from 2015 to 2019, said: “He’s very clear eyed in his understanding where things are going to go. People are lucky if they can see one step ahead. He has a tendency to be able to see five, six, seven steps ahead and I think that’s why he doesn’t have to exert undue pressure on his colleagues.”McConnell poses less of a roadblock to the Biden agenda than his own side, argues Ferrier, who now works in strategic communications.“When you have a 50-50 Senate with the vice president casting a tie breaking vote and you have the smallest House majority since before world war two, you’re in a situation where Democrats are going to be the biggest challenge to the Biden agenda.”“You’ve got moderate Democrats from swing districts to hard core progressives to senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. It’s going to be more of a challenge for Democrats themselves than anything else and I think they’re grappling with that right now. If you happen to be a Republican, why get in the way when Democrats are going to be their own worst enemies on this?”Some commentators, however, point out that even as McConnell strives to restore respectability to Republicans, this is still Trump’s party, its brand tarnished by racial divisiveness, voter suppression and baseless conspiracy theories.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “McConnell is trying to get the business community and business owners back in their camp in terms of contributions and money and support. He’s trying to rebuild that more traditional Republican base, particularly with money, going into 2022.“The problem for him is that they don’t want anything to do with Trump or QAnon or white supremacists and I don’t think the Republicans have succeeded yet in separating. The Achilles heel of the Republican party right now is the same thing that gives them some popular momentum. They’re going into a midterm where suburban voters, who are so key, have rejected Donald Trump and want nothing to do with him.” More
