At RealClearPolitics Neal Simon (no relation to Neil) presents two starkly contrasting scenarios for what might happen if Joe Biden is elected president:
If next week’s election results match recent polling, Joe Biden and his party will have control of the House, the Senate and the presidency in 2021. The Nov. 3 battle in the Great Red vs. Blue War will have been won decisively by the Democrats.
The military analogy feels sadly appropriate in an era when one in six Americans think violence is justified if their candidate loses. Within today’s climate of division, Biden and his victorious generals will be left with a crucial and binary choice: retaliation or reconciliation.
Here’s “retaliation”:
Retaliation for Democrats would entail a full-throttled, comprehensive attempt, using every available executive and legislative power, to advance a liberal agenda. Blue power would be consolidated by forming a Cabinet constructed to unite Biden’s party rather than the country, perhaps by appointing Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to high level positions.
In Congress, with 51 votes in the Senate, Democrats would abolish the filibuster and advance long-dreamed-about legislation without a single Republican vote. In the judiciary, Democrats would pack the Supreme Court by adding two, or even four, new justices. Blood-thirsty activists would level criminal charges against Donald Trump and even some of his aides and family members. It would all feel good for liberals who have endured not only Trump’s lying and abuse of power, but also his outright denial of their legitimacy as political opponents.
while here’s “reconciliation”:
In the executive branch, it starts with President Biden forming a Cabinet designed to increase national unity rather than party loyalty. Imagine a Secretary of State Mitt Romney or Veterans Affairs Secretary Martha McSally. There’s precedent for this type of bipartisanship. In another divided time, first term Republican President Abraham Lincoln named two Democrats among his seven Cabinet members, including Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.
In Congress, a good beginning would be replacing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi as Senate majority leader and speaker of the House. There’s too much bad blood between the Republicans and the two of them to allow any real chance of reconciliation. In their place, Democratic legislators would choose more moderate leaders who haven’t been molded by, and scarred by, decades of partisan fighting. Senate Democrats would maintain the filibuster, one of the last remaining tools that encourages cross-partisan cooperation. And they would commit to not passing legislation without at least a few Republican votes.
President Biden would take additional, purposeful actions to signal to the nation that we’re entering a new, post-partisan era. He would call for expanded national service, especially any program that enables young Democrats and Republicans to work side by side for the good of the country. He would fully endorse non-partisan electoral reforms, including ranked-choice voting, that reduce the subservience of legislators to their party bases. Our new president would minimize the partisan talk. His messaging would focus instead on our shared interests as Americans. Finally, and this will sound heretical to his most devoted followers, Biden would preemptively pardon President Trump of all federal crimes.
Like many Americans I find the prospect of reconciliation a lot better than retaliation but I’m afraid there is no prospect for it whatsoever. Regardless of the hypothetical position, President Biden wouldn’t be running the Democratic Party. Other than, possibly, black voters over the age of 40 he has no constituency of his own and by design power in government is mostly in the hands of the Congress and Congressional leadership is not moving towards Joe Biden but away from him. Throughout his career Mr. Biden has been what used to be referred to as a “Nixonian centrist” meaning that he is always moving to the center of his own party and that center is a lot farther left than it was during his career as Sen. Biden.
Maybe I should have titled this post “Won’t Be Fooled Again”. In 2008 Barack Obama ran on reconciliation but as president for whatever reason that’s not what he delivered. On what reasonable basis could anyone expect that President Biden could deliver on something President Obama could not?
Won’t Be Fooled Again:
Teamster retiree talking here.
This is a redux of 2012, when the Central States Pension Fund was failing and the Democrats that the Teamsters had asked me to support in my 40 year working career controlled the whole ball game.
They blew us off then, they’ll blow us off now.
To fix the pension shortfall would cost $30B.
I’ll bet they borrow and spend $3 trillion, and still blow us off.
“In 2008 Barack Obama ran on reconciliation but as president for whatever reason that’s not what he delivered.”
Would dispute that a bit. Obamacare was his signature law. It was not wha the left wing of the party wanted. It was not Medicare for all. There was no public option. They eliminated the death panel rule (condemning thousands of old people to tortured deaths). It was basically Romneycare, not that much different from a plan some Republicans had proposed a few years earlier. I think the best you can say is that the GOP had moved further to the right since that plan so if Obama wanted GOP support he should have also moved more to the right.
Query- Is there any legislation that Dems would vote for that wouldnt get a Republican challenged in a primary? Anything significant?
Steve
Obamacare was an attempt at reconciliation…
I love stand up comedy, keep it coming.
Death panel rules:
Would that apply to senior Democrat lawmakers?
They all expect to beat Thurmond’s record.
Query- Is there any legislation that Dems would vote for:
Do you mean a clean bill?
Not stuffed with green pork?
‘Retaliation or Reconciliation?’
I requote David Plouffe’s tweet: “It is not enough to simply beat Trump. He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not rise again.”
Considering who’s in the lineup to take over the Executive offices with a Harris win, I don’t think Reconciliation is on the table for Democrats.
‘“In 2008 Barack Obama ran on reconciliation but as president for whatever reason that’s not what he delivered.‒
He lied. He knew it at the time.
‘Query- Is there any legislation that Dems would vote for that wouldnt get a Republican challenged in a primary? Anything significant?’
In 2008, yes. Today. No. It’s degenerated into a existential winner-takes-all zero sum power game and the Democrats if they win plan to exterminate the losers (see the above Plouffe quote to get an idea of their mindset). So far the struggle has remained cold. I wouldn’t count on it staying that way past the election, no matter who wins. ANTIFA is promising ‘direct action’ if OMB wins I would call that a call for armed rebellion.
‘Obamacare was his signature law. It was not what the left wing of the party wanted.’
It was what he was able to get passed at the time, with zero Republican input and votes. To get it through he needed Blue Dog Democrats votes, and the excision of those left-wing provisions was their price. The Blue Dogs paid for it at the polls the next election, and the result was years of Republican Obstructionism and Pen and a Phone.
‘They eliminated the death panel rule (condemning thousands of old people to tortured deaths).’
You mean you didn’t provide palliative care at your hospitals back then? I know it was available in the area in 2007 (SE PA), we used it for my Dad. And who are you to decide when a death is ‘tortured’ or not? I’m not handing over my continued existence to a bunch of strangers to decide whether I should continue to live or not based on their criteria for a ‘meaningful life’, it would be my damned decision or my family’s.
As I understand it the infamous ‘death panels’ originally proposed were effectively going to be triage panels deciding who should get what treatment depending on ‘need’, ‘effectiveness’ or ‘availability’, similar to what NHS currently operates in the UK. Rationing of scarce resources for the greater good of society. Why is ‘my body my choice’ OK for pregnant women but not for anybody else? Especially if you’re willing to pay for it?
“As I understand it the infamous ‘death panels’ originally proposed were effectively going to be triage panels deciding who should get what treatment depending on ‘need’, ‘effectiveness’ or ‘availability’”
Wrong. What was in the bill was a provision that docs would be paid to talk about end of life decisions. So a doctor could talk with you and make your body your choice actually work. Instead, we just continued to see what we always saw. PCPs and patients do not discuss end of life issues then they end up deathly sick in the hospital and no one knows what they want. We end up calling some 88 y/o person at 2:00 AM to ask them what their 86 y/o sister would want. They dont know so they always say “do everything”.
Yes, we have palliative care. They are a strong service in our hospital. I know a bunch of them as our pain people work with them. However, again, if end of life discussions dont take place ahead of time before people are very ill they have trouble making decisions and they are often bad ones. So we continued to have unnecessary heroic interventions just so conservatives could hurt legislation. I hope there is a special place in hell for Palin. And, even now you believe it, even after it was the lie of the Year and very easy to look up and read for yourself. (Yes, I read the ACA. Yes, I fell asleep reading parts of it.)
“”Death panel” is a political term that originated during the 2009 debate about federal health care legislation to cover the uninsured in the United States.[1] Sarah Palin, former Republican Governor of Alaska, coined the term when she charged that proposed legislation would create a “death panel” of bureaucrats who would carry out triage, i.e. decide whether Americans—such as her elderly parents, or children with Down syndrome—were “worthy of medical care”.[2] Palin’s claim has been referred to as the “death panel myth”,[3] as nothing in any proposed legislation would have led to individuals being judged to see if they were worthy of health care.[4]
Palin’s spokesperson pointed to Section 1233 of bill HR 3200 which would have paid physicians for providing voluntary counseling to Medicare patients about living wills, advance directives, and end-of-life care options. Palin’s claim was reported as false and criticized by the press, fact-checkers, academics, physicians, Democrats, and some Republicans. Some prominent Republicans backed Palin’s statement. One poll showed that after it spread, about 85% of respondents were familiar with the charge and of those who were familiar with it, about 30% thought it was true.[3] Owing to public concern, the provision to pay physicians for providing voluntary counseling was removed from the Senate bill and was not included in the law that was enacted, the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In a 2011 statement, the American Society of Clinical Oncology bemoaned the politicization of the issue and said that the proposal should be revisited.[5]”
Steve
BTW, my doctors are not getting paid more when Covid pts die. I have asked a number of other specialties and they do not either.
Steve
Not Doctors, hospitals.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/hospital-payments-and-the-covid-19-death-count/
He said doctors. He lied. As usual.
““Our doctors get more money if someone dies from Covid. You know that, right?†Trump told a rally audience in Waterford Township, Michigan, on Friday.”
You do realize, probably not, that the article you cite provides no evidence that hospitals and/or doctors are misreporting. In fact, it notes that in general physician pay is down. Hospitals have lost money. The extra money goes towards the losses from caring for Covid patients. So we have healthcare workers risking their health and lives while we have some rich, entitled guy making false claims about us so he can win an election. And of course you believe anything he says. Its a cult.
Steve
“Wrong. What was in the bill was a provision that docs would be paid to talk about end of life decisions. So a doctor could talk with you and make your body your choice actually work. Instead, we just continued to see what we always saw.”
That’s how I remember it. The whole “death panels” thing was bullshit. It was basically a pay raise for doctors, a way for them to bill for something they were already doing (or should have been doing). In other words, it was old-school Congressional pork that was propagandized to be something else entirely.
BTW Dave, your BFF Michael Reynolds is back to calling you a Nazi again at OTB. Or maybe he’s been doing that a while, I’m just now getting back to reading and commenting there. It’s really disappointing how basically no one, not even James or Steven, ever says anything about his conduct. I spend a lot of time on Reddit now, and at least in the subs I spend time on – where there are actual communists and true radicals on the left and right – no one I’ve encountered is as much of an uncharitable, vindictive and dishonest asshole as he has been in the recent OTB threads.
It’s really remarkable how much he’s changed for the worse in these last several years. You actually met him in person – I have to wonder how you feel going from that presumably friendly meeting to the hatred he spews now – hatred that’s based on delusions and lies.
“You do realize, probably not,“
Never learned to read, thanks for clearing it all up Steve.
Cult. That would hinge on the definition of the word.
Trump is a rich, entitled guy who’s managed to position himself as the underdog in a Pitched battle with entrenched government. This resonates with a lot of people who feel like government is too intrusive in their lives.
Race and political correctness plays a big part in this as the blame for inequality and injustice has been placed on white peoples as a group.
They’re not a group and most have no power to change any of the social issues progressives blame them for .
Trump says the hell with political correctness, we won’t give African Americans sympathy or reparations, we’ll give them jobs, and the full human dignity of earning their own way.
Yes, he lies. Jimmy Carter probably never did and he got beat.
But a cult? I wouldn’t cross the street to go to a rally. Maybe for some people it is.
We entertained him in our home one evening. It makes me sad. But I’m afraid he echoes the views of many: if you’re not in 100% agreement with us, you are vile.
I have the distinction of having been called both a rightwing nut and a leftwing nut, on occasion for writing the same things.
“Never learned to read,”
Just what should I think when you make claims that are so clearly wrong? Nothing stopping you from reading the original version of the ACA to see what was in it.
“It’s really remarkable how much he’s changed for the worse in these last several years.”
Agree. Quite sad. I think it is what happens when you both write and live in an echo chamber. When you stop paying attention to the world around you. The people I work with are pretty evenly divided between GOP and Dems. Most of them are really good, decent, hard working people. They are all real Americans. No one is evil. I am not going to stop being friends with someone just because they vote for Trump.
Steve