Written by Ben Ritz and Will Marshall
It’s been less than a week since President Biden took office, but Washington’s tribal gladiators already are arming for mortal combat. Fortunately, pragmatic Democratic lawmakers are working to help Biden avert a relapse into political paralysis.
Senate Republicans are bewailing Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to end the pandemic and help jobless workers and small businesses tread water until it’s over. Though few complained when his predecessor broke the trillion-dollar deficit barrier – despite a then surging economy – Republicans now profess to be shocked by the “colossal waste” (Sen. Pat Toomey) of Biden’s “massive spending” package (Sen. Rick Scott).
Such hypocrisy is galling, and it has tripped the progressive left’s hair-trigger outrage alarm. Activists who didn’t support him in the first place fret that Biden is too eager to compromise in the name of the national “unity” he movingly invoked during his inauguration. They insist he waste no time in pressuring Senate leadership to kill the filibuster so Democrats can steamroll Republicans, at least for the next two years.
Everyone should take a deep breath. President Biden is anything but a political naif. Having been on the receiving end of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s deeply unpatriotic strategy of total obstruction for eight years, he doesn’t need lectures from sectarians in his own party about how rabidly partisan the other side can be.
But Biden understands he was elected to save our democracy from an unhinged demagogue, not to join Republicans in fomenting intractable enmity between red and blue America. He also knows from bitter experience that one-party rule is inherently unstable and fuels political paranoia and extremism.
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