2901

Timex, I think you see the problem. Let’s take a good, current example that illustrates this issue:

Number of opposition party members who signed onto the major COVID relief package passed in 2020 under Trump: all of them. (It was unanimous except GOP Rep Massie being an a-hole.) Think about that. After 3+ years of Trump excoriating Dems, abusing his office to target Biden, and all the other many ills of Trump, the Dems were willing to set their partisanship aside and vote, unanimously to pass a package that would be signed into law and implemented (at least at first) by Trump.

Number of opposition party members who signed onto the major COVID relief package passed in 2021 under Biden: zero. Zero in the house, zero in the Senate.

Think about that.

I actually agree that with healthy and normal political parties, bipartisanship can be a good thing, for both policy and political reasons. But that’s not where we are right now. The GOP is really not a normal political party at this point in time (And please let’s not get distracted by whether they ever were; at this point, the GOP is not a normal political party than can be compromised with.)

So, if you accept the reality that the GOP is NOT going to behave reasonably, not going to put country over party, not going to compromise in a sane way, then what?

My view is you remain open to compromise, leave the door open, let the GOP make counteroffers for a reasonable not excessively long window and then if they aren’t anywhere close to compromise, you push forward. Obviously, we can’t do this b/c of Manchin, but that IS the problem.

So with Manchin in the mix, that means we can’t really get anything done other than maybe accepting paltry counter-offers designed to give the GOP some political cover, which hell, 11% is better than 0.

2902

Here’s another way to think about “bipartisanship”: the Founders of this country very intentionally created a government system that was NOT based on parliamentary majoritarianism or consensus but rather independent branches check and balancing each other. In legal terms, our system of government is adversarial, relying on the different branches and different groups within the branches to reach good outcomes by checking and balancing each other.

Sometimes, this can be achieved within a branch, when the participants can agree. Sometimes this is achieved by two or more branches fighting it out to establish a balance over time as the wins and losses add up. And sometimes, this can be achieved by fights WITHIN a branch (specifically within Congress or within shifting majorities of the courts) to achieve good outcomes over time. Imagine if we did not allow the Warren Court to impose its own view overruling separate but equal and required the Warren Court to get heirs or representatives of the prior Judges who approved Plessy v. Ferguson et. al. to signed off on Brown v. Board of Education. We would still have Jim Crow in this country in that case, overtly and legally.

So sometimes “bipartisanship” is achieved not in the short run of immediate agreement but in the long haul of adversarial back and forth. Checks and balances. That’s our system. Not consensus, which is IMO a trap.

As an aside, as an undergrad at Berkeley in the 80s, I was involved in politics in the Student Co-ops, and at the time we had student leadership who were trying to run things via “consensus” instead by old school voting. And they were coming from about as left as you can come in the US. I was a liberal and even supported most of their student agenda, but the consensus thing was a freaking joke of group think, peer pressure and essentially authoritarianism wearing a friendly mask of cooperation. I HATED it. When I became President of the Co-ops, we went back to majoritarian voting, by God, and it has stayed that way to the present.

2903
2904
2905

I mean, McConnell is already on record saying his agenda is 100% to stop Biden, just like it always has been. It makes me want to scream when Washington media and pundits act like there’s room to work with Republicans.

2906

How about some more depressing news because why not?

Congressional Democrats made sparing use of a law that allows them to immediately overturn the Trump administration’s last-minute flurry of “midnight regulations” — including measures that weakened environmental protections, permitted discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity and made it harder for shareholders to hold corporations accountable.

To reverse the scores of other last-minute Trump rules, agencies must now use the often long and laborious rule-making process — unless a court strikes them from the books sooner.

2907
2908

Will we ever truly see another infrastructure week?

2909

So now what?

2910

I guess this is tackle the tax and budget components in reconciliation?

2911
2912

Only works if we can get Manchin onboard by also getting > 1 Republican Senator onboard too so he can call it “bipartisan.” But we can’t even get him (or any Republican) to agree to protect every eligible voter’s access to voting in the red states, which one would think would be uncontroversial, but Trump’s a whiny crybaby loser who won’t STFU about the “stolen election” already, so here we are.

2913

Yes, I know. But I think they have to put the bill up and try.

2914
2915

Less suspenseful than some of our recent elections.

2916

Would it be possible for Biden to get, say, Romney and another moderate to vote yes? Then Manchin would be onboard?

2917

The three strongest candidates for the three statewide offices – Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General – are winning the Democratic primary in a romp tonight.

Dems in Virginia: not so much with the dis and the array.

2918

I agree that the re-election rule in VA is dumb, dumb, dumb. This is the home of GW for gosh sakes. Let the governor have a second term.

2919

And tonight’s primary results mark the likely end of what once seemed like a very promising political career. In 2017, Justin Fairfax won the Lt. Governor’s race pretty handily…and then just months later was credibly accused by two different women of sexual assault.

He ignored calls to resign (once it was clear that Northam would survive the blackface yearbook thing), and defiantly ran for Governor…and compared himself to civil rights martyr Emmit Till.

Fairfax is currently polling at 3.7% of the vote in VA, a very, very distant fourth in the field.

2920

Also at campaign events, Terry McAuliffe is using “Return of the Mack” as his theme song.

Tough to even begin to compete with that.