Biden's Dream Of Normalcy

When at  19:45 of the video below, Bill Maher characterizes the Democratic presidential nomination as a choice between "fundamental change" and "return to normalcy." Montana's Steve Bullock replies "this is a single issue election and that issue is beating Donald Trump."

Bullock has a blood brother in Delaware/Pennsylvania's Joseph Robinette Biden, who is either the most naive or the most dishonest (exception for the latter being anyone named "Trump") individual east of the Mississippi:

The only way this is not delusional is if Biden is committed to giving in to whatever Republicans demand, which he amassed a track record of doing as vp. https://t.co/M1I8Tci07x

— David Dayen (@ddayen) November 6, 2019

Bullock has an excuse because he's new to national politics. However, the guy whose hero nominated Merrick Garland, denied a hearing by Mitch McConnell for the United States Supreme Court, does not. Matt Yglesias evidently recognizes that and recently explained

Biden hasn’t served in the Senate since 2008, but nearly 20 Republicans — including key figures like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, moderates Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, and dealmakers Lindsey Graham and Lamar Alexander — served alongside him. What’s more, precisely because of this history, Biden often served as an emissary from the Obama White House to Senate Republicans when the exigencies of governance required one.

If Senate Republicans sat down one day and decided that what they wanted to do was have a good-faith negotiation about how to strike some win-win deals that advance the main policy priorities of both sides, Biden would be a good person for them to sit down with.

But in terms of how likely that is, all Biden needs to do is look around at the current impeachment controversy. Senate Republicans know that Trump was trying to frame Biden. Heck, several Republican senators specifically and publicly urged the exact course of action on Ukraine that Biden took.

And on the Ukraine issue there is no ideological division between Biden and mainstream Republicans — they all share the US national security establishment’s hostility to Russia and support for the idea that the US should back efforts to pull Ukraine out of the Russian sphere of influence. It’s Trump who is the ideological outlier here, as well as the guy trying to smear one of their friends and former colleagues.

Yet nobody in the GOP is standing up for Biden or seeking to clear his good name. And the reasons aren’t mysterious: It’s politics. And in 2021, it will be politics, rather than epiphanies, that carry the day.

Whether through naivete or shared ideological perspective, Vice-President Biden revealed that he's willing to give Republicans a loaf of bread as long as they will leave him a slice. In that long line of evidence demonstrating that removing Donald Trump will not remove the GOP's fever (and bring about an epiphany), Judge Garland stands as only one, albeit the most obvious, example. 

We now have a Republican, considered by an adoring media to be one of the most reasonable and moderate Republicans who have served in the Trump Administration, keeping a straight face while remarking "On what? You're going to impeach a president for asking for a favor that didn’t happen and – and giving money and it wasn’t withheld?" I don't know what you would impeach him on."

Think harder, Nikki-  maybe extortion, attempted bribery, restructuring the presidency for personal financial enrichment, and abuse of office, nothing serious.

In 2008, Barack Obama could be excused when "with profound humility" he argued that his election would in the future be seen as 'the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." But this is eleven years later and, unamused by Biden's statement and perspective, Charlie Pierce (two days before CBS' excerpt of the Haley interview) wrote

Mark his words. Then ask Merrick Garland to mark them.

God love him, Joe Biden is going to ride this dinosaur until it drops dead underneath him. Which of "his" Republican colleagues is going to have this "epiphany"? Mitch McConnell? Tom Cotton, who, on Wednesday, started pitching for the next Mexican War? And what will this "epiphany" entail? A move away from radical deregulation and fringe Protestantism? Abandoning, at last, supply-side economics? My guess is that, if and when this administration* ends badly, the Republican Party will find itself compressed into a diamond of pure Id—angry, vengeful, and out for blood. The epiphany is likely to be a fiery reaction against anyone associated with anything these fevered minds believe is "liberal." I could be wrong. The sky could rain gumdrops.

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"Self-Destruction"

At the National Press Club, On Wednesday, the day after Round 2, Episode 1 of Democrats Debate, Montana governor Steve Bullock remarked

And I listened to that next night. I saw his reelection becoming more likely with each passing month. As someone who comes from a state where a lot of people voted for Donald Trump, someone who knows how hard he is going to be to beat, please permit me take everyone out of the Twitter-verse for at least a minute and bring us back to Earth. Let me put it plainly. We cannot defeat Donald Trump's politics of personal destruction if we practice the politics of self-destruction. The fact is, we are well on our way to losing this election, long before it ever really even started.

He added "extending health insurance to undocumented immigrants is also a surefire loser."

Never mind the irony of someone on Twitter urging his audience to get out of the ''Twitterverse."  A more important irony is that as Bullock decries "the politics of self-destruction," he is practicing it himself.

This appears to be a prime theme. In the debate itself, Bullock had contended

Look, I think this is the part of the discussion that shows how often these debates are detached from peoples’ lives. We got 100,000 people showing up at the border right now. If we decriminalize entry, if we give healthcare to everyone, we’ll have multiples of that. Don’t take my word. That was President Obama’s Homeland Security secretary that said that.

(It came from the Obama Administration, thus from on high.)

But of course, Bernie Sanders a moment earlier had not suggested "we give healthcare to everyone."  CNN's Dana Bash had asked the Vermont senator" you want to provide undocumented immigrants free healthcare and free college. Why won’t this drive even more people to come to the U.S. illegally?" Sanders, who was otherwise effective in the debate, completely whiffed when he responded

Because we’ll have the strong border protections. But the main point I want to make is that what Trump is doing through his racism and his xenophobia is demonizing a group of people. And as president, I will end that demonization. If a mother and a child walk thousands of miles on a dangerous path, in my view, they are not criminals. They are people fleeing violence.

This was an awful answer. A President Sanders want neither to sign an Executive Order granting free health care to illegal immigrants nor to propose legislation granting free health care to them.  Rather, he plans to include immigrants, legal or illegal, in whatever health care program he enacts. That would be, hopefully, his Medicare for All- but might not be.

Alternatively, a health care initiative could exclude persons who are not citizens or legal residents. Care for these uninsured folks would thus fall upon the public; they would become free riders, receiving treatment largely, or fully, for free. That would be worse for both the public and themselves than if they were covered by the same insurance as citizens and legal residents.

This is a presidential campaign, however, and the proper answer to a Bash-like question is "no. They will not get free healthcare" (or free college). Contrary to conservative propaganda, illegal immigrants do not get to vote, and any suggestion they will get something for nothing (as it will be twisted to mean) will merely annoy most other people.

Another way to avoid giving the GOP fodder on health care- or higher education- is to challenge the premise of the question. If Dana Bash or any other interviewer asks a question based on a false premise, the candidate should challenge that- politely (or not) and firmly.

For Bernie Sanders, that would have been to assure the audience that leaving immigrant children to suffer or die would be just as unacceptable to the American people as to himself.

Nor, for that matter, should Steve Bullock (or any Democrat) be given a free pass when he misrepresents his opponents' position. Perhaps then he would understand that if he is exorcised by "the politics of self destruction," he would be better advised to invest in a mirror than in a doomed presidential campaign.

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