Will Biden Sell Us Out? Do You Really Have To Ask?

Gaetz went on Fox News and said he’d retire from Congress if McCarthy made a deal with conservative Democrats to do an end run around the GOP's fascist fringe. McCarthy didn’t have to; even Gaetz, still hoping for an Armed Services Committee subcommittee gavel, gave in and engineered a McCarthy win Friday night on the 15th ballot. And why not! Despite McCarthy’s lies to the media yesterday that “there were no deals”— he’s even lying about lying— there were plenty of deals, including one that will make it impossible for him to make bipartisan deals with the Democrats. That can’t be good news for conservative Democrats— not just the ones in the House and Senate, but the ones in the White House as well.

Yesterday, Toluse Olorunnipa and Yasmeen Abutaleb reported that Biden has been planning on “cooperation” with the Republicans. “Cooperation” with Republicans is always at the expense of the working class and for Biden, it just means reverting to his basic nature. Progressives need to take this to heart and grow a (collective) pair. Olorunnipa and Abutaleb wrote that “the White is pursuing a recalibrated strategy for navigating the next two years that will seek to temper potentially explosive clashes with bipartisan cooperation” to avoid his presidency becoming enmeshed in investigations. Here’s the dangerous part progressives will have to be ready to fight:

Senior White House officials are planning to counter an expected onslaught of oversight by Republican lawmakers by working with the GOP behind the scenes on bipartisan bills as Biden gears up for a reelection bid he has said he intends to wage. The strategy also involves moving aggressively to implement and publicly celebrate pieces of the multi-trillion-dollar rush of legislation already passed over the past two years, providing a counterweight to GOP moves to probe missteps and controversies from the same period.

The photo op to look at a bridge over the Ohio River with McConnell and DeWine is fine; surrendering on core economic issues— like Social Security and Medicare— is not. “For Biden” wrote Olorunnipa and Abutaleb, “2023 is shaping up to be a pivotal test of whether he can outmaneuver his political foes while also appeasing Democratic base voters who have argued that the octogenarian president’s gentlemanly approach to politics is a relic of a bygone era. Biden’s approval ratings remain mired in the low-to-mid 40s, a perilous position to be in as he kicks off the second half of his term.” They should be reporting about how it’s shaping up for the American people, not for various personalities.

They wrote that Biden’s “legislative ambitions will, by necessity, be more modest than those he pursued in his first two years in office. Biden faced criticism during that time from Republicans and even some Democrats who charged he had veered too far left with his aims. Despite the GOP dysfunction in the early days of the new Congress, the president faces a formidable opponent in the legislative branch. Republicans have pledged to use their new, if narrow, House majority to frustrate his plans and cast him before the American public as too old and outwitted to deserve a second term… [Biden’s] ability to maneuver in a divided Washington could determine whether he is reelected in 2024, or whether his relatively productive first two years in office are ultimately eclipsed by a second half marked by political bickering and chaos.”

[Biden’s] legislative affairs team sees a pathway for striking deals on a handful of issues where both parties have shown an interest in cooperation. The president and his aides have pointed out that many of the initiatives he signed into law don’t kick in until this year.

“The big laws we passed were consequential, but they’re basically promises,” Biden said this past week.

Administration officials hope to use the implementation of these laws as a springboard into additional bipartisan action. As Republicans see the benefits of laws passed in their districts, the thinking goes, they will be more open to expanding on things like low-price insulin for all or specific infrastructure projects.

For their part, Republicans in the House have cast the new congressional term as a moment of reckoning for Biden and his fellow Democrats, promising major changes and casting doubt on how much Biden’s message of unity will resonate after the president enacted much of his legislative plans with only Democratic votes.

“As the clock runs out on Democrats’ one-party rule in Washington, House Republicans will hold the line,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the third-ranking House Republican, told reporters last month. “On day one in the majority, we will start reining in the Biden administration and deliver on our commitment to America.”

House Republicans have pledged to use their new authorities to investigate the business dealings of Biden’s son, Hunter, as well as a range of administration policies, including the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, actions by the Department of Justice and the increase in migration at the southern border.

Biden’s aides point to the Republicans’ narrow margin for error, highlighting that many of the lawmakers who will make up the party’s slim 222-213 House majority hail from districts Biden carried in 2020. They also point to the fact that Democrats expanded their Senate majority, giving the president a smoother pathway to confirming judicial appointments and other nominations.

…Some Republicans have called on the party to use the prospect of government shutdowns or an unprecedented default on the nation’s debt as leverage to extract concessions and spending cuts from Democrats. Others have said McCarthy should be willing to consider impeachment or other tough measures against the president.

White House allies and opponents agree that Republicans’ focus on investigations could make it difficult to achieve major bipartisan deals in Congress over the next two years.

“For all intents and purposes, the Biden legislative agenda ends,” said Doug Heye, a Republican strategist who worked with House leadership after the GOP takeover in the 2010 midterms. “That was true of Obama, that was true of Trump.”

Heye added that the kind of Congress Biden knew during his 36 years as senator no longer exists. The retirements of lawmakers such as Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) means there will be fewer people that Biden has worked closely with still around to strike deals, he said. They have been replaced by a new generation of social media savvy lawmakers who see more value in attacking Biden rather than working with him, Heye said.