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During his presidency, Donald Trump was never going to have a celebratory signing event at the White House in which he handed Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer ceremonial pens.
There were a lot of reasons for this, among them a pair of political tautologies.
If Pelosi and Schumer were for something, then Trump and his supporters were against it.
And vice versa.
And not just against it, but totally, ferociously, vehemently against it.
The same phenomenon existed during the presidency of Barack Obama: any idea or legislation he backed was instantly absolute anathema to the right.
It didn’t matter what the merits or history of the concept were; if President Obama favored it, Republicans reflexively deemed it the work of the devil and would do anything to denigrate, denounce, and destroy.
One of the most prominent examples was Mr. Obama’s support of the individual mandate to buy health insurance as part of the Affordable Care Act, an idea that originated at the uber conservative Heritage Foundation and from leading rightists.
Some of this dynamic – during the reigns of both Donald Trump and Barack Obama – was inspired by and a reaction to the presidents themselves, but some of it derived from the polarized environment which they both inherited (the causes of which have been well documented everywhere).
The promise and peril of the Biden presidency has been his pledge to change this mode of behavior, to win over Republican votes for his agenda.
But if Mr. Biden is less personally polarizing than his predecessors, the times they aren’t achanged or achangin’.
The automatic reflex now comes less from the president himself, it seems, than from that stubborn milieu – and from other personalities within the Democratic Party.
If Nancy Pelosi is for it, Team Red is, by definition, against it.
If Bernie Sanders is for it, Team Red is, by definition, against it.
And, especially, if The Squad is for it, Team Red is, for sure, against it.
As Bluegrass Bluelands leader Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), tells the Washington Post (about the president’s soon-to-be-released infrastructure package, but it applies to most everything):
“The more it resembles what Biden wants to do, the less chance Republicans will support it.”
What complicates this even more is the Democratic Party’s demonstrable, sharp move to the left during the Trump presidency and into this one.
President Biden is supporting policies that are far more progressive and sweeping than Barack Obama ever dreamed of backing, which makes it easier for the Republican leadership and grassroots to instantly denounce whatever comes out of the incumbent’s mouth.
Biden: Pop-Tarts should be toasted before eating.
Team Red: Toasting Pop-Tarts is reckless, dangerous, a threat to the American way of life, and socialist – some would say even communist.
Thus we have a situation in which the Dominant Media is down with the thematics generated by Team Biden, that he is FDRLBJ reincarnate, determined to build off of his $1.9 trillion pandemic+ triumph by whatever means necessary (reconciliation, filibuster nixing), to pass historically transformative legislation on social welfare, healthcare, infrastructure, taxation, energy, environment, education, civil rights, voting rights, gun safety, minimum wage, union power, immigration, child care, elder care, and more more more.
Team Blue wants whole loaves on these causes, not 75%-25% (say) compromises that could yield those commemorative Oval Office (or Rose Garden) signing ceremony pens for Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy.
Democrats, including the president himself on Sunday, can muse all they want about using, for example, guns or immigration, to pick the bipartisan lock, finding a legislative vehicle that breaks the Red Fever and suddenly creates opportunities for the parties to work together, at least on some issues.
Not to be cynical or pessimistic about such notions, but the chances of that, especially as the Democrats talk about such things as trillions in new taxes and spending via reconciliation or the scrapping of the current filibuster rules, are about as high as Cornell winning the Super Bowl.
So while Jen Psaki can tell Chris Wallace on Sunday that the president is “eager to hear ideas from both parties as well,” we have these elements that are nails on a chalkboard to those Republicans who would like to work across the aisle – and music to the ears of those Redders focused on the midterms and pandering to the red-meat-eating base:
* E.J. Dionne declares that Biden “he could make himself the most unlikely political revolutionary in our history.”
President Biden this week is set to begin sketching out his plan to commit trillions of dollars toward upgrading the country’s ailing infrastructure, fighting climate change and bolstering federal safety net programs, as Democrats try to usher in a new era of bigger government — and spending — in the aftermath of the coronavirus.
The forthcoming proposals reflect a broader political shift underway in Washington, where Democratic leaders have sought to capitalize on their 2020 election victories to advance once dormant policy priorities and unwind years of budget cuts under administrations past….
The White House this week also intends to release the early contours of its 2022 budget request to Congress. The blueprint is expected to call for a major increase in domestic spending starting next fiscal year, particularly targeting federal agencies that tackle education, climate change, housing insecurity and other longtime Democratic priorities, according to the party’s top congressional aides.
* Also, a separate story in the Washington Post:
Barack Obama, facing pressure from both parties, worked to keep his stimulus package under $1 trillion. Joe Biden launched his presidency by spending about $2 trillion and hopes to bump it up to $5 trillion.
Obama spent months negotiating with Republicans, thirsty for a bipartisan credential that never came, while Biden nodded to the opposition party and then pushed his agenda without them.
What makes this a challenge for even close observers to understand is that the Dominant Media has a clear overall view of what’s going on:
1. It wants Biden to succeed.
2. It favors (or at least is totally fine with) more massive spending and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
3. It is all good with Democrats using reconciliation to do whatever.
4. It is just itching to see the filibuster changed or eliminated.
5. It likes Joe Manchin when he votes with Elizabeth Warren and is frustrated with him when he holds out.
6. It likes to write about Biden’s agenda as if the odds of it passing are much higher than they are.
7. It likes to write about the prospects of bipartisan compromise as if the odds of it happening are much higher than they are.
8. It has broken with the Biden administration over the conditions at and media access to the border, but not so much that it doesn’t ignore video such as this (Imagine if such a sequence had been shot under similar conditions by Cory Booker, as he is blocked by a Trump administration official; it would have been everywhere.)
As I’ve said before, Joe Biden might not pass a single additional piece of major legislation in this term.
If he does, the chances are good that it will be through some combination of reconciliation and filibuster busting.
The chances that Republicans join in piecemeal/situationally, ignoring their ire over the nature of Democratic-only efforts and the process used on other legislation, are close to zero.
It is impossible to know what happens next, but it’s safe to say the prospects of a lot of Biden-Harris-Klain-Pelosi-Schumer-McConnell-McCarthy joint whip operations and signing jamborees remain dim (and are getting dimmer with every Ron Klain chess move).
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IN OTHER NEWS
* Star Tribune curtain raises:
What killed George Floyd during an encounter with Minneapolis police last May is at the heart of the trial of former officer Derek Chauvin, which resumes Monday morning with opening statements and the start of witness testimony.
* The Washington Post (again!) immigration scoops:
The Biden administration’s attention along the Mexico border has been consumed for the past several weeks by the record numbers of migrant teenagers and children crossing into the United States without their parents, at a rate that far exceeds the government’s ability to care for them.
But as they race to add shelter capacity for these minors, Department of Homeland Security officials are privately warning about what they see as the next phase of a migration surge that could be the largest in two decades, driven by a much greater number of families.
DHS expects approximately 500,000 to 800,000 migrants to arrive as part of a family group during the 2021 fiscal year that ends in September, a quantity that would equal or exceed the record numbers who entered in 2019, according to government data reviewed by The Washington Post. Officials are racing to find facilities to house these families ahead of their release, along with additional staff to process an increase in humanitarian and asylum claims.
* The Wall Street Journal gets an interview:
The U.S. isn’t ready to lift tariffs on Chinese imports in the near future, but might be open to trade negotiations with Beijing, according to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai.
In her first interview since Senate confirmation, Ms. Tai said she recognized that the tariffs can exact a toll on U.S. businesses and consumers, though proponents have said they also help shield companies from subsidized foreign competition.
“I have heard people say, ‘Please just take these tariffs off,’” Ms. Tai said. But “yanking off tariffs,” she warned, could harm the economy unless the change is “communicated in a way so that the actors in the economy can make adjustments.”
*
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