President Biden ran for the White House as an apostle of bipartisanship, but the bitter fight over the $1.9 trillion pandemic measure that squeaked through the Senate on Saturday made clear that the differences between the two warring parties were too wide to be bridged by Mr. Biden’s good intentions.
Not a single Republican in Congress voted for the rescue package now headed for final approval in the House and a signature from Mr. Biden, as they angrily denounced the legislation and the way in which it was assembled. Other marquee Democratic measures to protect and expand voting rights, tackle police bias and misconduct and more are also drawing scant to zero Republican backing.
The supposed honeymoon period of a new president would typically provide a moment for lawmakers to come together, particularly as the nation enters its second year of a crushing health and economic crisis. Instead, the tense showdown over the stimulus legislation showed that lawmakers were pulling apart, and poised for more ugly clashes ahead.
Mr. Biden, a six-term veteran of the Senate, had trumpeted his deep Capitol Hill experience as one of his top selling points, telling voters that he was the singular man able to unite the fractious Congress and even come to terms with his old bargaining partner, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader.
Congressional Democrats want far more than Republicans are willing to accept. Anticipating the Republican recalcitrance to come, Democrats are increasingly coalescing around the idea of weakening or destroying the filibuster to deny Republicans their best weapon for thwarting the Democratic agenda. Democrats believe their control of the House, Senate and White House entitles them to push for all they can get, not settle for less out of a sense of obligation to an outdated concept of bipartisanship that does not reflect the reality of today’s polarized politics.
But the internal Democratic disagreement that stalled passage of the stimulus bill for hours late into Friday night illustrated both the precariousness of the thinnest possible Democratic majority and the hurdles to eliminating the filibuster, a step that can happen only if moderates now deeply opposed agree to do so.
Some observations
Biden was right to tout bipartisanship and to try to engage in it. He would be right to keep talking about it and trying. But he is also right to go ahead and not let republicans slow him down in the two precious years he has before voters put the fascist GOP back in control of the House and/or Senate. That would be return to gridlock. Gridlock favors the fascists and harms democracy. Time is grinding democracy and the rule of law down. It is also grinding down social comity, trust and respect. Trust and respect are mostly gone. Lies, corruption, gross incompetence and crackpot motivated reasoning, e.g., 'the election was stolen' and 'the democrats are pedophilic communists', are now normalized among mainstream majority conservatives.
Maybe the democrats can modify the filibuster to allow passage of laws that protect democracy and voting. But maybe not. It looks like the next two years could amount to three laws passed by the budget resolution process without a single republican vote, two in 2021 (pandemic relief, infrastructure) and one in 2022 (?). And that would be it. That could easily be nearly the entire Biden legislative legacy. Everything else would have to come from executive power alone.
Despite a growing majority support for key democratic policy goals, the defenses of democracy and the rule of law look to be still slowly crumbling. Time is grinding the American experiment down to an end marked by fascism, corruption, rank bigotry and gross incompetence. At least, that is how it looks now. Maybe by the 2022 elections, things will have significantly improved. Maybe.
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