My friend Terry, who I have written about here is Daily Kos before, I consider an astute, experienced, and generally optimistic observer of things political. He periodically emails me his thoughts about current politics. While I often believe his opinions to be overly optimistic, I have usually found them informative and thought-provoking. Here he argues that Biden will successfully cobble together a bipartisan coalition in the congress.
“The dust is settling, the King is Dead, the Republic stands
and a legislative journeyman is in charge.”
“I don’t think the media really quite understands what happened this week. The old order just died. In the space of three days: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the President-Elect took the bipartisan moderate Senators’( all six of them) $906B stimulus package, told Pelosi and Schumer to back it( they really didn’t want too) and presto, Biden has a working majority of at least 51 in the Senate and 230 or so in the House ( counting the bipartisan “ Problem Solvers caucus”). Not too bad for an old veteran.“
“But it’s just the opening play for a foxy legislator like Biden. I’ve seen this movie before: Willie Brown ran CA. when he was the minority leader in the mid-80s, Deukmejian was Governor, and he matched his minority with 5 Republican Assembly members, and effectively controlled the legislature. Now it’s not the same in 2021 Washington, but the maneuver is the same: create a bipartisan working majority on the big legislative proposals and the rest will take care of itself. While the Senate still has the filibuster requirement of 60 votes, the real problem has been getting reasonable legislation to the floor for a vote. In the last 10 years McConnell, for various reasons, has been able to obstruct normal legislative action on the floor. In this new era of a Biden Presidency, that apparently will no longer be possible.”
“In the last three days, McConnell has been put in a corner. At least three members of his own caucus have said enough is enough, they want to legislate and move bills to the floor for a vote. McConnell doesn’t have the horsepower to stop that now that Trump is a lame duck and Biden is the new power player in Washington. And Biden is an old fox with lots of tricks.”
“My prediction: a nice warm stimulus package will pass in December. And it’s just the start of a new era of bipartisan legislating. It’s the Biden Congressional majority in the making.”
Top Democrats Back Compromise Plan to Revive Stimulus Talks (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/us/politics/coronavirus-stimulus-talks-congress.html?referringSource=articleShare)
Frankly, I am not optimistic at all that should the Democrats fail to capture the Senate Biden will be able to work with McConnel that much better than Obama did. The failure of the Democrats in the recent Congressional elections cannot help but convince the more reactionary members of the Republican party like McConnel that their party is not on the wane.