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In the Thursday night focus group I conducted – with four Biden voters and four Trump voters – we had a discussion about what Joe Biden thinks of Trump voters.
I asked the eight participants to raise their hands if they believe that Biden generally respects people who voted for Donald Trump.
The unsurprising but disappointing result?
All four Biden supporters said he does respect Trump voters; none of the Trump voters thought so.
(Two of the Trump voters said that Trump respects Biden voters, while none of the other six did.)
Here is some of the discussion on this topic, in which the Trump voters said Biden sees them as deplorable suckers, and all but one of the Biden voters said that the incoming president views Trump voters favorably as “Americans.”
I think the most politically interesting and the most important questions in the U.S.A. right now are the same:
* What does Biden actually think of Trump voters?
* What do Trump voters think of what Biden thinks of them?
* How do the answers to those two questions add up to tell us the answer to this: What are the prospects of Biden getting some combination of broad support in the country and cooperation from congressional Republicans to accomplish things in the White House to meet the nation’s challenges at this difficult time?
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In his Thursday interview with Stephen Colbert, Biden was asked about these themes.
At one point, he served as sort of an apologist for Republican senators who he says asked him privately a while ago to give them more time to acknowledge that Trump lost.
At another moment, when Colbert asked Joe and Jill Biden about working with Hill GOPers who have gone after their son Hunter, Joe said, “Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t mean I’m not angry, doesn’t mean I wasn’t angry and doesn’t mean if I were back in the days of high school I wouldn’t say ‘come here’ and go a round.”
Jill: “But you have to take the high road.”
Joe: “The American people, I think they can smell the phoniness, smell what’s true and what’s not true.”
Joe then added that he “feels badly” for congressional Republicans who go after him to avoid Trump’s wrath.
Jill: “People we thought were our friends.”
(More of the Colbert clips here.)
I hear in many quarters what one Biden voter in the focus group said: That Joe Biden might be baffled by Trump voters, but he doesn’t think they are deplorables, the way Hillary Clinton did.
Honestly, I don’t know if that is true or not.
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The most essential reading on these important topic comes from Ron Brownstein in the Atlantic, keying off of something I asked the focus group about – Monday’s Biden Electoral College speech, in which he both renewed his conciliatory pledge to be president for all of the people and demonstrated apparent disdain for Trump and those who have backed his efforts to challenge the election results:
[A] senior Biden adviser said that in targeting the GOP’s postelection actions, the president-elect’s goal was not “trying to score points against Republicans” or branding them as anti-small-d democratic. Rather, his intent was to reassure Americans that the failure of Trump’s efforts, even with the support of so much of his party, underlines the fundamental resilience of American democracy. “It was … more about trying to lay out the scope and the magnitude of the crisis that we had just navigated,” said the adviser,...
The GOP’s unprecedented postelection maneuvering poses an inescapable question for Biden: whether reaching bipartisan agreements is possible when many Republicans have become so radicalized that they still refuse to acknowledge Trump’s defeat.
The Democratic Party – in DC and at the grassroots – is truly split on this matter. Whatever the outcome in Georgia, the Biden administration is going to face the choice of when, how, and whether to try to reach deals with Republicans, specifically Mitch McConnell.
This whole topic taps into a lot of raw nerves in both parties., which is why the comments made by Biden’s campaign manager (and incoming deputy chief of staff), Jen O’Malley Dillion continued to cause high-level stir on Thursday.
O’Malley Dillion herself did not apologize or address how she truly feels about Republicans in the aftermath of telling an interviewer, “I’m not saying they’re not a bunch of f---ers. Mitch McConnell is terrible.”
Instead, she executed a balancing act by telling another interlocutor that she “used some words that I probably could have chosen better” when speaking with Glamour magazine
Here is just what some of blue checked Red and Blue Twitter thought about all of that:
I won’t speak for O’Malley Dillon’s heart, of course, but I can say without fear of contradiction that a lot of Democrats think DC Republicans and Trump voters are a bunch of f’ers and that Mitch McConnell is worse than terrible.
And Republicans know they think those things.
And Democrats feel very justified in thinking those things.
And Republicans know Democrats feel very justified in thinking those things.
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Joe Biden and the folks working for him can deny all they wish that he shares those views, but I’ve never once heard him in public speak in any more than platitudes about his desire to work on behalf of Trump voters.
Silence on this matter is surely better than talking about their clinging to their guns and religion.
But as the focus group suggests, the platitudes, so far at least, have not bridged the divide for one and all.
The flap over the Jen O’Malley Dillion remarks is not just some Beltway brouhaha (although, as many have pointed out, it is surely that), or just another example of sexism and double standards (although, as many have pointed out, it is surely that, too).
It is also both symptom and cause of 2021’s most fundamental deliberations about a new American president and the very nation he will lead.
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Finally, on these points, two essential reads:
* Politico’s John Harris on another part of what makes these matters so difficult for Biden: the open healthy/unhealthy challenges he faces from his left flank (unlike the rapid fealty enjoyed by Trump):
During the transition, Biden has often seemed as if someone affixed a “kick me” sign to the back of his suit jacket. The transition, which has seen prominent Democrats openly carping about Biden’s process and several of his decisions, risks creating a dangerous dynamic for the incoming president. In the Washington context, Biden’s peril is that he is sending the message that there is not a penalty for publicly pressuring him, and is likely a benefit. In the national context, any president should wish to project a leadership vision that transcends party and clamoring constituencies.
* Gang of 500 spokesperson/co-chair David Ignatius on the dangers and difficulties the fealty to Trump are still causing and are likely to continue to cause.
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To paraphrase one of my favorite jokes, there are only two people who know when and how the current impasse over pandemic relief legislation is going to end, and unfortunately they disagree.
The current state of the negotiations combine the two most important Hill adages:
* Nothing is decided until everything is decided.
* Congress never acts until it absolutely has to – and sometimes not even then. (Yes, you hear that truism from me a lot….)
By my count, there are almost a dozen issues that are still not resolved, even as a government shutdown deadline looms and/but all the senior leaders express optimism that a final deal will get done.
My current sense: The deal will get done but it will be closer to Christmas than to today before anything is signed into law.
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GEORGIA SENATE RUNOFF NEWS
Three very important Atlanta Journal-Constitution stories (meaning that all y’all should sign up for online subscriptions at least through early January)
* Who has voted early so far (not a lot of clues here suggesting who has the upper hand, but still very interesting data).
* The metrics and poetry of the ground games on both sides.
* This:
Gov. Brian Kemp is fed up with the unrelenting attacks from conspiracy theorists calling on him to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia. But he’s even more enraged that some of those peddlers of false claims are targeting his wife and three daughters….
Kemp, speaking to reporters shortly after a vaccine-related event at Grady Memorial, did not blame President Donald Trump for the wrath he’s facing from Republicans, even though the president has stoked the fury by blasting Kemp for refusing to illegally reverse his defeat in Georgia.
“As far as I know, my relationship with the president is fine. I know he’s frustrated, and I’ve disagreed on things with him before,” he said, adding: “Look, at the end of the day, I’ve got to follow the laws and the Constitution and the Constitution of this state.”
* And on the all-important Republican messaging issue, the AJC smartly points out that Mike Pence used his latest Peach State campaign swing to not-so-subtly move from talking about Donald Trump to talking up the Senate races, while the Washington Post says the conflicting arguments are still a lingering GOP challenge.
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OTHER ESSENTIAL READING
* The New York Times’ dynamic duo of David Sanger and Nicole Perlroth:
Federal officials issued an urgent warning on Thursday that hackers who American intelligence agencies believed were working for the Kremlin used a far wider variety of tools than previously known to penetrate government systems, and said that the cyberoffensive was “a grave risk to the federal government.”
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