{UAH} A TALE OF THE TWO SLEEPY JOE BIDENS

A tale of two Bidens

by Washington Examiner, 

 

October 18, 2020 12:00 AM

 

“I'm running as a proud Democrat, but I'm going to be an American president,” Joe Biden said in his recent town hall appearance on ABC. “I'm going to take care of those that voted against me as well as those who voted for me, for real. That's what presidents do. We've got to heal this nation because we have the greatest opportunity of any country in the world to own the 21st century. And we can't do it divided.”

This posture betrays the double-faced nature of Biden's candidacy. He is attempting to speak to two different constituencies that want opposite things and to satisfy both.

On the one hand, he wants to portray himself as the reasonable, centrist Democrat who slayed the socialist Bernie Sanders and would seek to be the president of all Americans, regardless of party. He has vowed to work with Republicans to find common ground. This is the message he wants to deliver to the many voters who dislike President Trump but largely share the center-right political views by which he has governed.

On the other hand, Biden has to assure the left-wing base of his party that he will ram its priorities through Congress using whatever sort of smash-mouth politics is necessary. To that end, he has declared himself “open” to nuking the Senate filibuster and packing the Supreme Court. And over the course of the campaign, he has committed to a whole host of other liberal priorities as well.

If Biden wins next month, then the tension between these two Bidens is going to be the central conflict of his presidency. Ultimately, he will have to choose which set of promises he will fulfill.

Should Biden seek to be president of all Americans and pursue legislation that can win over four to eight Senate Republicans, as he vowed on Thursday night, he’s going to have to scale back his liberal ambitions significantly and seek to pass legislation on which there is more common ground.

However, if he decides to take the radical steps of seeking to nuke the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court with liberal judges, then Biden cannot be any sort of healer or uniter. In that event, he will have gone much further than Trump in turning the nation's already toxic politics into open warfare. Such a power grab would make it impossible for any Republican to work with him on any issue for the duration of his presidency.

To understand how the Left is going to approach the Biden presidency, it’s important to understand how they view the Obama administration. Whereas conservatives remember Barack Obama's unilateralist "pen-and-phone" governing approach, the Left believes that Obama squandered the first year or two of his presidency trying to work constructively with a Republican congressional minority devoted to obstructing his agenda.

The Left believes that winning elections will only translate into policy victories if there are fundamental changes. That begins with nuking the filibuster so as to allow the majority party to enact its agenda in the Senate without any internal checks. They bristle whenever Biden speaks of wanting to make a good-faith effort to win over Republicans. Though they may tolerate it now as a necessary part of winning the election, they won’t stand for it should he actually attempt to follow through.

The Left is much better organized now than it was when Obama was elected, and it is a stronger part of the Democrats' coalition than ever before. Younger progressives are a larger part of the party. And Democrats have become radicalized by the disappointments of the Obama era and their outrage over the Trump presidency and the tactical savvy of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In other words, Biden is going to be under heavy pressure to deliver for the Left. That’s going to make it a lot more difficult for him to deliver on his promise of governing for all Americans, regardless of party.

EM         -> { Trump for 2020 }

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