Must I Repeat Myself?
God knows I’ve written about this before, here and elsewhere, notably here, and here. But this is so infuriating and so dangerous it seems I really have no choice but to engage the point yet again.
Make no mistake, this view is not new for Biden — he said essentially the same thing in the midst of Watergate — nor is it unique to him. Indeed, for the most powerful and connected Democrat officials it is the central operating theory. Their entire view of governance is asymmetrical to the conservative/Republican philosophy. The conservative take is basically identical to the answer Conan the Barbarian gave to the question “What is best in life?”:
Conversely Democrats have long be completely invested in the idea of government as a series of deals and negotiations in which you have to pander to the desires of the other party so that everyone will like each other more. Which is to say, a completely alternate reality that hasn’t existed basically ever in our system of government. While conservatives connive for decades to literally wipe liberalism out of existence Democrats keep telling themselves that there’s a world in which both sides can be content to get some of what they want, but not all.
Worse, their attitude is contagious to voters who all too often believe the fairy tale reflects anything like political reality — because so very few of them trouble themselves to pay attention to what’s really going on in the halls of political power. The go for years paying no attention to how politics works, content to grumble about the highway that didn’t get built or the factory that closed without really looking into WHY, then every four years some smarmy politician comes along singing nursery rhythms about “coming together to get things done” and that sounds nice. Non-confrontational, low-drama, peaceful even. So they vote for it and status quo Dems feel like their pre-surrender tactics have been validated by the public.
Make no mistake, that’s EXACTLY what happens. Democrats, even when they have the majority, negotiate against themselves to come up with a watered down position that they might, MIGHT, get some Republican votes — then the go into conference and compromise some more and the minority party that actually has very little power comes up with more of what they wanted than the majority does. It’s much worse when Dems are in the minority, of course, because the GOP has no inclination at all to soften their approach. Why do you think it is that even when you have a Democrat president the Dems entertain negotiations with Republicans about cutting Social Security and medicare rather than, say, warfighting? I mean yes, the corruption of money plays a big role but even considering taking the political damage that cutting those programs would involve is sheer insanity — yet they do it on the regular.
Democrats have somehow convinced themselves that the country is simply a right of center population. They lost to Reagan and he crushed it in 1984 and they have been fleeing from his shadow ever since. Nevermind that for half a century the entire country supported FDR’s New Deal liberalism, suddenly, out of nowhere (hint — it wasn’t out of nowhere, it was a backlash to desegregation) the whole nation became right wingers? No, but Dems act like it did. Yet it does them no good!
Bill Clinton ran as a very centrist guy that who could make common cause with “Reagan Democrats” and went so far as t sign draconian limitations on the social safety net that was the legacy of The Great Society and what did it get him as a reward? Impeached over some nonsensical crap the public didn’t support, and a successor who doubled down on Reaganisim. Because conservatives have no time for partnerships and balancing power — they intend to hold ALL the power and crush anyone who thinks otherwise.
Or take Biden. This is not him suddenly saying “maybe if I’m nice to them they…” — no. This is who he’s always been.
“If we bring down a great political party that should not be blamed for what happened, we begin to bring down the system. … And I for one don’t have anything better to replace it with.” — Joe Biden on the GOP in 1973, at the height of Watergate.
There’s a GREAT deal more and all of it consistent. What it reflects, at root, is that in Biden’s view the real division is not between Democrats and Republicans or between liberals and conservatives, but rather between politicians and the rest of us mudsill who simply don’t understand how these things work. So has Joe earned their favor by his 50 years of pandering to the interests of Republicans? Let the current attempt to bury him in the service of protecting Donald Trump serve as your answer to that particular rhetorical question.
Don’t think for a single second that he’s an outlier or an unusual example among Democrats in office — this is their core operating principle. Newcomers like AOC or Katie Porter or Parmila Jayapal or Elizabeth Warren who insist that Dems actually stand for something are scorned by party power players for the specific reason that they DON’T suffer that nonsense. As journalist Matthew Yglesias rightly observed on Twitter, this simply reflects a party that has always (in the post-realignment era) seen itself “as brokers between left-wing activists and moderate Republicans” and really have no idea how to govern according to their own vision. No one ever accused the GOP of such a desire to bridge between the Louis Ghomerts of the world and moderate Dems. They know full well what their vision is and will break any and every “norm” to get their.
Consider the courts. Did you know that Barack Obama considered Roberta Kaplan to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat and decided that perhaps the Republicans would not accept her so he settled for Merrick Garland? How exactly did THAT work out for him? Over the last three years Mitch McConnell has not only filled that seat with a Federalist Society ideologue but worked diligently to confirm others who will protect and defend conservative political goals regardless of the fortunes of elections (including the goal of tainting every election with blatant voter suppression). Nevermind that these include open bigots and people who’ve literally never tried a case or so much as taken a deposition — they are not there to be objective and qualified judges, they are there as party operatives because the conservative goal is the Conan Objective. Meanwhile hardly any Democrat in the 2016 election is on record having cried havoc about what Republicans might do to the courts if they gained power because they naively assume that Republicans would do what Dems would have done — compromise. Even in the face of McConnell actively stealing a seat they believed.
That’s who Biden IS. It’s who any and all Democrat centrists ARE. Sure your Buttigieg or your Klobachar or your Bennet might have some appealing trait or other, but they DO NOT appreciate the complete and total teetering-on-the-edge-of-the-cliff CRISIS that this country faces. A crisis arrived at specifically BECAUSE they spent 50 years (and the last 30 in particular) failing to appreciate and react to the true nature of their opposition and the threat they posed. Nor does Nancy Pelosi, or Chuck Schumer, or Steny Hoyer, or anyone else in the party that they deign to allow to have any significant power. They will coast on their status quo comfort couches right until the point at which it is far far too late to save the Republic from a Dominionist Oligarchy Autocrat.
Voters, I implore you, do NOT be seduced by “can’t we all get along” political rhetoric. Cast your votes, at every level, for candidates who are clear-eyed and resolute about the nature of the current conflict. While you still can.
