QOTD: Joe Biden the Deal Man
by digby
“I don’t consider Republicans enemies. They’re friends.”
I’ve said it before, if you liked the 2011 budget deal, you’ll love a Joe Biden presidency.
It turns out Obama made a critical if underappreciated mistake in the final hours of the back and forth: sending Joe Biden to haggle with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell once McConnell’s talks with his Democratic counterpart, Harry Reid, had broken down.
From my after-the-fact discussions with Democratic aides in the House and Senate leadership, it’s clear that Reid had a plan for resolving the cliff and considered the breakdown of his talks with McConnell very much a part of it. By involving Biden, Obama undercut Reid and signaled that he wanted a deal so badly he was unwilling to leave anything to chance, even when the odds overwhelmingly favored him. It suggested that even if Obama plays his cards exceedingly well in the run-up to the debt-limit showdown, he could still come away with a worse deal than he deserves because of his willingness to make concessions in the closing moments.
Mr. Cantor said he hoped the president would engage Mr. Biden more, recalling when the vice president negotiated a deal with presumptive Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, to head off the so-called “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and spending cuts at the end of 2012.
“Hopefully, I think the president may see the light and say if you want to get a deal done, bring in the deal man, Joe Biden,” he said.
That’s nice. Of course, the Tea Partyers aren’t quite as impressed with his skills at capitulation. They dumped Cantor so it’s unlikely they’re going to welcome Biden in with open arms except to toy with him, and make him sell out his own Party before they close the door. It’s never enough for them. After all, for all his trouble, they decided that as much as Joe aims to please them by giving away the store, they prefer not to make deals with Democrats.
But who knows? Maybe Joe can find the magic formula to make the Freedom Caucus happy. They have a list of demands, after all. If he wants to make deals with his friends the Republicans, he knows what to do.
And by the way, Clinton didn’t say she considered the Republicans her enemies — she said they considered her their enemy which is simply objective truth. They consider all Democrats their enemies even their ol pal Joe and the fact that he is still deluded that the old days of Tipnronnie are possible is truly alarming. I certainly don’t get the feeling that Obama is under any such illusion any longer.
Unfortunately, according to the polls, a lot of Democratic voters still believe it’s possible to “compromise” with these radical freaks, at least in the abstract, so Biden might have an argument here. As much as the GOP voters don’t seem to understand how our government system works, the Democratic voters don’t seem to have recognized that we are dealing with a bunch of extremists. So, who knows? They might just think old Joe, the experienced white guy is just the ticket.
.