By Paul Waldman
Columnist |
December 30, 2022 at 7:30 a.m. EST
President Biden signs the Respect for Marriage Act during a Dec. 13 ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
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On the campaign trail in May 2019, Joe Biden predicted that once Donald Trump was defeated, “You will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends,” and they’d become willing to get down to business, making compromises so legislation could pass. The reaction among those of us who had watched Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) plan and execute a brutally effective strategy of obstruction against President Barack Obama, and then saw the GOP become even more radical under Trump, was swift and severe. I wrote a column about it that ran under the headline “Joe Biden can’t possibly be this naive.”
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Yet as we approach the two-year mark of his time in office, Biden and Democrats have assembled a list of legislative accomplishments in Congress that is far longer and more consequential than almost anyone thought they would — and a good deal of it came with the help of Republicans. How on earth did it happen?
The answer is complicated; it isn’t that Biden understood something no one else could grasp, or that his powers of persuasion are so compelling that he turned a Republican “no” into a “yes” again and again. Rather, a host of variables came together to make it possible. Nevertheless, we have to give Biden and the White House their due.
ADVERTISING
Democrats passed seven major pieces of legislation in the 117th Congress (along with a large number of smaller ones): the American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Chips and Science Act, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Respect for Marriage Act and the omnibus spending bill. Just two of the seven — the ARP and the IRA — passed with no Republican support.
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But the first factor that enabled their success was about Democrats — specifically, the extraordinary unity they maintained throughout most of this tumultuous period.
Biden came into office with smaller congressional majorities than any incoming Democratic president in the history of his party, dating all the way back to Andrew Jackson: a single-digit advantage in the House, and a 50-50 Senate that meant he had zero votes to spare. Yet despite all the attention paid to the whims of Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-turned-I-Ariz.), Democrats hung together on almost everything. The major exception was the Build Back Better bill, which Manchin managed to torpedo, but which got a second (albeit diminished) life as the IRA — and which even in its lesser form was still a huge win.
That unity is a tribute to the skills of Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), but it also happened because Democrats in Congress were determined not to let their opportunity go to waste. And that has something to do with the second factor at play: Trump.
As Larry Sabato of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia told me: “Trump and the GOP leadership also helped Biden by being as harsh and negative as possible. They reinforced the partisan polarization that kept Democrats together. Trump, in particular, assisted Biden by refusing to get off the stage and reminding Democrats daily what could happen if they weren’t successful.”
At the same time, Trump’s steady decline into self-parody likely helped some Republicans finally decide they had room to support a Democratic initiative or two that they agreed with, even if it gave some political benefit to a president of the other party. Enough Republicans voted for infrastructure, the industrial policy of the Chips Act, the modest but meaningful gun reform bill, codifying marriage equality and the omnibus spending bill to defeat their own party’s filibusters.
Of course, those bills still garnered lots of Republican opposition, and in many ways the Republican Party has continued to grow more radical. But Trump’s mounting legal troubles and the failure of his favored candidates in so many races convinced at least some Republicans that there’s now room to oppose him, at least from time to time.
Perhaps even more critically, there was a cadre of Republicans in the Senate who voted for most or all of those bills. Some of them were longtime moderates (Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia), and some of them had decided not to run for reelection in 2022 (Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri), which gave them the freedom to vote as they wished. That got Democrats most of the way to the 60 necessary votes, and a few other GOP senators could be found with their own reasons for voting for a bill such as infrastructure or marriage equality.
Finally, there was Biden and his seasoned staff. “Even after the embarrassing setback on BBB, they kept pushing to get at least half a loaf,” says Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, “and Biden used his skills and connections with the members of the House and Senate to get that last push for votes when they were needed.” Sabato made the same point: “Look at Biden’s staff — they have deep experience both with Biden and with how Washington works.”
So does that mean Biden was right back in 2019? Not exactly: There was no widespread “epiphany” among Republicans, and they certainly didn’t start acting like “friends.” Much of the administration’s success depended on timing, the right combination of incentives and retirements, the willingness of Manchin and Sinema to (mostly, eventually) stick on the team, the skill and work of Schumer and Pelosi, Trump’s ongoing self-immolation and a dozen other factors. It’s also important to remember that a significant portion of the agenda Biden ran on remains unaddressed.
But even if he might have been too willing to grant Republicans the assumption of good will, in the end Biden did what almost nobody believed he could. Many of us thought it was almost absurd to hope for. So if Biden wants to say he told us so, he might have earned the right.
Columnist |
December 30, 2022 at 7:30 a.m. EST
President Biden signs the Respect for Marriage Act during a Dec. 13 ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Listen
6 min
Comment
340
Add to your saved stories
Save
Gift Article
Share
On the campaign trail in May 2019, Joe Biden predicted that once Donald Trump was defeated, “You will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends,” and they’d become willing to get down to business, making compromises so legislation could pass. The reaction among those of us who had watched Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) plan and execute a brutally effective strategy of obstruction against President Barack Obama, and then saw the GOP become even more radical under Trump, was swift and severe. I wrote a column about it that ran under the headline “Joe Biden can’t possibly be this naive.”
Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
Yet as we approach the two-year mark of his time in office, Biden and Democrats have assembled a list of legislative accomplishments in Congress that is far longer and more consequential than almost anyone thought they would — and a good deal of it came with the help of Republicans. How on earth did it happen?
The answer is complicated; it isn’t that Biden understood something no one else could grasp, or that his powers of persuasion are so compelling that he turned a Republican “no” into a “yes” again and again. Rather, a host of variables came together to make it possible. Nevertheless, we have to give Biden and the White House their due.
ADVERTISING
Democrats passed seven major pieces of legislation in the 117th Congress (along with a large number of smaller ones): the American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Chips and Science Act, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Respect for Marriage Act and the omnibus spending bill. Just two of the seven — the ARP and the IRA — passed with no Republican support.
Follow Paul Waldman's opinionsFollow
But the first factor that enabled their success was about Democrats — specifically, the extraordinary unity they maintained throughout most of this tumultuous period.
Biden came into office with smaller congressional majorities than any incoming Democratic president in the history of his party, dating all the way back to Andrew Jackson: a single-digit advantage in the House, and a 50-50 Senate that meant he had zero votes to spare. Yet despite all the attention paid to the whims of Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-turned-I-Ariz.), Democrats hung together on almost everything. The major exception was the Build Back Better bill, which Manchin managed to torpedo, but which got a second (albeit diminished) life as the IRA — and which even in its lesser form was still a huge win.
That unity is a tribute to the skills of Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), but it also happened because Democrats in Congress were determined not to let their opportunity go to waste. And that has something to do with the second factor at play: Trump.
As Larry Sabato of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia told me: “Trump and the GOP leadership also helped Biden by being as harsh and negative as possible. They reinforced the partisan polarization that kept Democrats together. Trump, in particular, assisted Biden by refusing to get off the stage and reminding Democrats daily what could happen if they weren’t successful.”
At the same time, Trump’s steady decline into self-parody likely helped some Republicans finally decide they had room to support a Democratic initiative or two that they agreed with, even if it gave some political benefit to a president of the other party. Enough Republicans voted for infrastructure, the industrial policy of the Chips Act, the modest but meaningful gun reform bill, codifying marriage equality and the omnibus spending bill to defeat their own party’s filibusters.
Of course, those bills still garnered lots of Republican opposition, and in many ways the Republican Party has continued to grow more radical. But Trump’s mounting legal troubles and the failure of his favored candidates in so many races convinced at least some Republicans that there’s now room to oppose him, at least from time to time.
Perhaps even more critically, there was a cadre of Republicans in the Senate who voted for most or all of those bills. Some of them were longtime moderates (Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia), and some of them had decided not to run for reelection in 2022 (Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri), which gave them the freedom to vote as they wished. That got Democrats most of the way to the 60 necessary votes, and a few other GOP senators could be found with their own reasons for voting for a bill such as infrastructure or marriage equality.
Finally, there was Biden and his seasoned staff. “Even after the embarrassing setback on BBB, they kept pushing to get at least half a loaf,” says Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, “and Biden used his skills and connections with the members of the House and Senate to get that last push for votes when they were needed.” Sabato made the same point: “Look at Biden’s staff — they have deep experience both with Biden and with how Washington works.”
So does that mean Biden was right back in 2019? Not exactly: There was no widespread “epiphany” among Republicans, and they certainly didn’t start acting like “friends.” Much of the administration’s success depended on timing, the right combination of incentives and retirements, the willingness of Manchin and Sinema to (mostly, eventually) stick on the team, the skill and work of Schumer and Pelosi, Trump’s ongoing self-immolation and a dozen other factors. It’s also important to remember that a significant portion of the agenda Biden ran on remains unaddressed.
But even if he might have been too willing to grant Republicans the assumption of good will, in the end Biden did what almost nobody believed he could. Many of us thought it was almost absurd to hope for. So if Biden wants to say he told us so, he might have earned the right.
