And in his regular Washington Post column David Ignatius sounds some hopeful notes:
“Don’t fight the problem,†famously observed Gen. George C. Marshall, the Army chief of staff during World War II and later secretary of state. Meaning, in this case, if Joe Biden is elected, he shouldn’t try to govern over the heads of people who voted for Trump, or behind their backs — but through them, with policies that will make “unity†more than just a slogan. To quote Jamie Gorelick, a Democratic lawyer and former deputy attorney general, “Just telling people that they are wrong does not work.â€
[…]
Divided government would probably push Biden to govern more from the center, where he seems most comfortable. That’s a mixed blessing: The country needs bipartisan solutions, but it also needs economic change — making health care available to all, for example, and distributing the rewards of future prosperity more fairly. The center should be a locus for action, not paralysis.
I think that Mr. Ignatius misunderstands the nature of Joe Biden’s centrism and his remarks about health care remind me of Groundhog Day, returning as we are to discussions I had a decade ago. The effect of the Affordable Care Act, what Mr. Biden has proposed, and even what Bernie Sanders has proposed do little to make “health care available to all”. They are much more insurance reform than health care reform. They may even serve to limit the availability of health care to all. Although insurance and care are related they are not synonymous.
The effect of subsidies is to increase willingness to pay and, unless you increase the supply of care at the same time, that will cause prices to rise. Period. You cannot tax or issue credit fast enough to counteract that effect. To truly make health care available to all you must increase the supply of care, cut prices, or both. The other alternative is to re-define care to mean what people need rather than what they want and who decides? That has been castigated as rationing.
But in conclusion as long as there are anti-Trumpians out there who demand that Trump supporters be, in effect, cast out I see no way that Mr. Ignatius’s vision of a unity government will come to pass. Mr. Biden will not reject his own supporters.
1. Divided government is not guaranteed. That will be determined by the senate runoffs in Georgia and considering the top line result just now; the Democrats maybe favorites at winning those races for control of the senate. Expect a LOT of money to be thrown in those races. Perhaps an attempt to get Collins, Romney, Murkowski to switch parties?
2. It should be noted the incoming house majority is more liberal/progressive then the current democratic majority (due to attrition in the centrist ranks).