Did the Democrats’ Takeover of the Senate Embolden Biden?
He might not have counted on controlling both chambers of Congress when he campaigned as a moderate.
Joe Biden didn’t just campaign as a moderate. He signaled again and again that he would be an affable placeholder president who’d clean up the messes created by his opponent, mend some fences with allies and get the pandemic under control.
“Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said not long after essentially locking up the Democratic nomination on Super Tuesday.
Referring to some of the younger candidates he beat in the primary, he said, “There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.”
The point of such gestures was to reassure the Democratic base that there was a reason to back him, not least because he’d pick someone more progressive as his running mate.
This messaging had the extra advantage of implicitly reassuring independents, moderates and anti-Trump Republicans. In effect, Biden was saying, “Look, I’ve got to bring the hotheads along for the ride, but don’t worry: A vote for me isn’t a vote for that Bernie Sanders stuff.”
Biden’s more explicit appeal to these voters was that he would reach across the aisle. “I know how to go toe-to-toe with the GOP, but it doesn’t have to be and it can’t be that way on every issue,” he said at a Philadelphia rally in May 2020.
In the Cleveland debate, Donald Trump accused Biden of wanting socialized medicine. Biden said that was a “lie,” adding, “The party is me. Right now, I am the Democratic Party.” In other words, don’t pay attention to those guys. “The platform of the Democratic Party is what I, in fact, approved of,” he explained.
According to most Republicans and right-wing pundits, this was always a lie, and Biden’s first 100 days prove it. He promised to unite the country, they say with almost metronomic regularity, and now he’s dividing the country with his radical agenda. This week’s address to Congress, with its trillions upon trillions of dollars’ worth of new spending on cradle-to-grave social welfare programs and infrastructure made that abundantly clear.
The Republican critique is eminently plausible. The central argument of the Trump campaign — to the extent that it made arguments — was that Biden’s moderation was either a ruse or irrelevant because he would be a pushover for his party. If you start from that assumption, saying “I told you so” seems reasonable.
And they may be right.
But there’s another possibility. A.B. Stoddard of RealClearPolitics, one of the best political analysts in the business, argued on a recent episode of my podcast, The Remnant, that the Biden team always assumed it wouldn’t have control of the Senate. Georgia had a runoff election for two seats. The Republicans needed to win only one to hold onto the Senate—which most observers in both parties thought was all but assured. But largely because of Trump’s tantrums about losing Georgia in the presidential election, many natural Republican voters refused to vote.
“Telling everyone that the race was stolen when it wasn’t cost the Republicans two Senate seats,” said Erick Erickson, a Georgia-based conservative radio host, echoing the conclusions of many Republican and Democratic strategists alike.
My point isn’t that Trump is to blame for what Biden is doing now. It’s simply that Biden’s push for an almost New Deal-level of government activism might not have been his plan. He stumbled into an opportunity and he’s seizing it. His breakneck pace stems in part from the belief that Democratic unified control of government won’t last past the midterms (or even one Senate death or early retirement), so the Dems need to swing for the fences while they can.
In one sense, this is vindication for the “I told you so” Republicans. It’s also an illustration of crystalline purity that elections have consequences.
And it’s a useful reminder that our system doesn’t assume politicians are bipartisan by conviction. Rather, our Madisonian structure of checks and balances was intended to force compromise. If the GOP held the Senate, Biden might have been the guy he said he’d be, not because he wanted to, but because he’d have no choice.
But because both parties—and many presidents, Biden included—cling to the idea that you have to grab everything while you can, we’re witnessing the biggest overreach in my lifetime.
A test of this theory may come soon enough. If the GOP takes back the House or Senate, Biden may try to revert to the bipartisanship he promised, which will be cold comfort to those of us who don’t think we can afford what he’s doing now.
I would think that any president would want to be more aggressive in pursuing their agenda whenever they seize control of both chambers of Congress, whether it be upon inauguration or in the lame duck session of their last year. I don't think that Biden is overreaching at all in his agenda. His agenda is ambitious, expansive, but you forgot the most important factor - his agenda is popular.
I may not agree with all policies Biden is pursuing, but it is clear that his policies on infrastructure, entitlements, and social programs are overwhelmingly popular with both Democrats and Republicans. He is not trying to send money just to his base. Many of his plans for infrastructure will benefit a class of voters that voted passionately against him.
Republicans in Congress for the most part only oppose his agenda because it is Joe Biden, a Democrat, proposing it. They make no intellectual argument against it because they would vote for 10 trillion if it were Trump proposing the same ideas. They approve stimulus checks when Trump wakes up one day and tweets it; they oppose those same checks under Biden and talk about borrowed money. They will subsidize and give handouts to every last voter of their base as long as the money goes directly to their voters. Trying to find 10 Republican senators to negotiate in good faith is pointless because their goals diverge from their constituents. The reason that Biden's proposals have large Republican support is because they do not target one version of America (Blue or Red). Biden has a vision of making life better for everyone regardless of their political affiliation.
That's why this is far from an overreach. If we instituted terms limits for every member of congress right now and prevented them from fundraising, then they would support much of his agenda because it aligns with a large segment of their constituents. Look back to the Democratic debates. Biden was among the most presidential & electable but he still ran on transformative vision of government.
The Republicans have vowed to block *any* major legislation Biden puts forward. It doesn't matter how "moderate" or "bipartisan" it is, they are duty-bound to block it based on the broader strategic needs of the Republican party.
Today, Republican lawmakers continue to advertise to their districts about the great wonders of the stimulus bill passed last month--the one they VOTED AGAINST.
Obamacare was passed along party lines and demonized by the Republicans--and this theater arguably contributed to their big wins in 2014 and 2016. And yes, theater: in 2018 Republican politicians across the country bought ads **swearing to defend Obamacare** because their constituents love it.
Like so many pundits and observers of our modern times, Mr. Goldberg is fighting the last war. None of the old rules apply. There is no longer any such thing as a "moderate" that passes bipartisan laws, only laws that have the support of a strong majority of the American *people* that are passed along strict party lines.
And there is no such thing as truth when it comes to the Republicans, which is now their primary weapon against the Democrats: they can oppose Biden and enjoy the benefits of what they oppose **at the same time**.
That's why all of the GOP staff structures in Congress are becoming oriented around "communications": because substance no longer matters. Truth no longer matters. 70% of the Republican base believes an utterly idiot obvious lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump has discovered that you can just lie and people will believe *anything* no matter how preposterous. Old politicians would "spin" and "promise" but Trump discovered for the Republicans that it's better to just directly contradict verifiable present-day reality because the people who are still giving Trump money right now will believe absolutely anything you tell them.
Mr. Goldberg's article today is very timely--if the time is about 1996.