In Barack Obama’s book this comment in the preface is an important insight that I hope Joe Biden shares:
“I confess,” the 44th president of the United States says in the preface, “there have been times during the course of writing this book, as I reflected on my presidency and all that’s happened since, when I’ve had to ask myself whether I was too tempered in speaking the truth as I saw it, too cautious in either word or deed, convinced as I was that by appealing to what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature, I stood a greater chance of leading us in the direction of the America we’ve been promised.”
Yes, he was. He empowered slick hyper-partisans like Paul Ryan by pretending that he was an honest broker. And they paid him back by sabotaging as much of his presidency as they were able. It took Obama and his team way, way too long to realize that the Republicans were radical obstructionists regardless of what he proposed or how much he tried to “reach across the aisle.” They wanted to destroy his presidency and if it meant destroying the country they were fine with that. It made them sense their power which we saw with what McConnell did with Merrick Garland. After Trump they are no longer bound by any sense of shared commitment to the constitution or democracy in general.
And, by the way, it’s important to remember that Obama’s softball approach applied to some of the centrist divas in the Democratic caucus as well, people like Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln. Everyone needs to understand that impediment to change going forward as well. Even if we are lucky enough to win the runoffs in Georgia there will still be Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema and probably Mark Kelly and Jon Ossoff along with some others who will join with the GOP “Concerned Caucus” of Murkowski, Collins and Romney to wring their hands and clutch their pearls about anything necessary for fundamental change. It is always pulling teeth.
Maybe the destruction of the past four years will change things. But I’m not sanguine that it will be easy. The GOP will be totally obstructionist, of course. That’s obvious. And even with a Democratic majority it will be tough. Remember that the democrats had a 60 vote majority in 2009 and getting Obamacare passed was a months long tremendously difficult negotiation that ended up being stymied when Kennedy died and was replaced by Scott Brown leaving only 59 seats. 59 seats! They had to pass it through reconciliation so they could do it with 50 votes and a bunch of Democrats voted against it. And most of them lost their elections anyway.
This stuff isn’t easy in the polarized country with an undemocratic institution like the senate and we had all better be prepared for it. I’m just hoping that Biden will use whatever executive power he has to fix the damage done by Trump’s wrecking crew and finds creative ways to move the country forward without depending on the Senate to be on the team regardless of which party is in the majority.