All Americans should hope Joe Biden is right about his ability to forge consensus with Republicans and strike deals with them and his fellow Democrats if he becomes President in 2021.
Democracy can not succeed when one of its main political parties has become backward and is the beacon of warring against good government.
Unfortunately, history and current events are not on former Vice President Biden’s side.
His experiences in government should illustrate this reality.
While he was a Senator from Delaware during the Clinton Administration, Republican leaders like Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, and Dick Armey routinely obstructed Democratically initiatives like the Clinton Health Care Plan which failed to get a vote. No Republicans voted for the Clinton Economic Plan (the one that led to reduced deficits, balanced budgets, and surpluses.)
While he was Barack Obama’s Vice President, Republicans led by obstructionist in chief and Supreme Court seat thief (now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell) did everything he could to stymie the Democratic agenda (like major infrastructure) and judicial nominees.
This same Enemy of the People (McConnell) is using his abused power as Senate Majority Leader to block the close to 200 bills (including those pertaining to election security) passed by the Democratic House.
Again, all Americans should hope Joe Biden is right about working with Republicans.
However, all Americans should be prudent and work on electing forward thinking and non-obstructionist candidates to the majority in both the House and Senate in 2020 as well as the White House.
Nothing good for this country will get accomplished if individuals like Mitch McConnell and Tom Cotton are reelected or remain in the Senate Majority.
Nothing positive will happen if filibuster reform is not enacted if Democrats retake the majority in the Senate.
Joe Bidens hopes are something to wish and strive for.
Unfortunately, reality demands greater informed citizen involvement and increased voter turnout leading to election day in November 2020.
That is the key to helping our Democracy become better. That is the solution to making our Republic functional again.
At a fundraiser attended by 100 very wealthy people this week, Biden said he wouldn’t demonize them for being rich, and that “no one’s standard of living will change” if he was elected.
SMH.
I was kind of hoping the standard of living for tens of millions of people would improve, so there’s your defining “Joe’s an idiot sometimes” statement.
It’s his “basket of deplorables” moment.
What a monumentally stupid thing to say. It’s Hillary level of cluelessness.
Please, please run a real progressive, someone less grabby and more in touch with real people, Joe is Hillary 2.0, and America can’t take another 4 years of the whining orange baby man.
Julian Castro if fast becoming my guy. I’m actually afraid to say that because the candidates I like never seem to win.
No, given their past history of absolute obstructionism, cheating and outright hatred of everything NOT them, all Americans should hope that the Republican party goes the way of the Dodo.
They’ve demonstrated since 1994 that they are not capable of compromise; indeed they treat Democrats solely as an enemy to be defeated, not an opposition party to be bargained with.
Witness McConnell’s “Graveyard of Legislation”. Witness Merrick Garland. Witness their cover-up of foreign meddling in our elections, and their ongoing insistence that, contrary to our lying eyes, it did not happen.
The Republican party, as it exists today, needs to be demolished, stripped of any power, because if it continues, it will destroy this country for the benefit of the 0.01% oligarchs.
Perhaps some reasonable so-called ‘conservative’ political party can rise out of it, but if Joe Biden cannot see that the GOP is the political equivalent of ‘The Terminator’ (It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.), he’s hopelessly naive, and has spent far, FAR too long in the corridors of power.
Just because Mitch MccConnell is polite to him in the hallway doesn’t mean “we can work together”.
The glorious days of “Tip-n-Ronnie working together” are dead and gone, (and never really existed anyway. ‘Bi-partisan Comity’ has always been illusory)
“Working together” with the GOP has only lead to concessions by the Democrats on everything since the 90’s; the GOP NEVER concedes anything. Any win the Democrats have gotten has been despite the Republicans, not with them.