“Quo vadis” is a Latin phrase that means “whither goest thou” or “where are you going.”
Biden has the biggest domestic agenda ambitions of any president since Lyndon Johnson, and very skinny congressional majorities to achieve them with. He spent his first 100 days in office passing a $1.9 trillion Covid-relief bill without a single Republican vote, and presiding over a gargantuan vaccination rollout that more than delivered on his promises. Giving these top priority and the lion’s share of his time and attention were no-brainers.
What is equally a no-brainer is that he won’t be able to keep his campaign and inaugural promises to bring back bipartisanship in the two-party sense. The relief bill showed this, and Republican resistance to common-sense Covid-19 health measures, and now vaccinations, shows this. GOP efforts in state legislatures to restrict voting rights and discriminate against LGBQT people show this. Our country didn’t vote for what Republicans want when it elected Biden, nor will Republicans accept what Democrats want. With a few exceptions on relatively minor issues, Biden will get nothing done if he has to depend on Republican help to do it.
Therefore,
“With Republicans electing to effectively sit out talks with Democrats in Washington, Biden has pressed forward, refusing to be drawn into protracted, dead-end negotiations. His deeply rooted, near ideological devotion to finding bipartisan consensus has, for the moment, been pacified by the realities of the day …. Instead, Biden has focused his deal-making efforts on lawmakers from within own party, whose slim congressional majorities mean that a single Senate defection or the loss of even a minor bloc of House members would be enough to grind his presidency to a halt,”
says CNN (read story here), which without a doubt is an accurate portrayal of the situation. Which brings us to the headline above that article:
“‘The honeymoon is over’: Biden faces tougher tasks ahead as progressives demand more.”
Now this doesn’t make sense. Sure, the progressive caucus within the Democratic Party has a wishlist, just as the more strident Republican elements do (one of which is not allowing African-Americans to vote, and throwing out election results if they do). Any talk of “bipartisanship” is premised on bringing together the political middle, which surely is what Biden was referring to in his stump speeches and inaugural address. But some observers wonder if America still has a political middle (others argue it does, but the parties are drifting away from it).
In any case, right now progressives, like Trump supporters, are too small a faction in politics, and American life, to get what they want. But Biden needs their votes to pass anything in Congress. And everything they want infuriates Republicans. So how does Biden navigate this?
Given the makeup of Congress, and divisions in the country, passing anything in Congress will be a miracle; Biden is at severe risk of being hamstrung. Trump’s battering-ram tactics won’t work here. Instead, Biden is drawing upon the savvy and relationships accumulated during half a century in D.C. politics to carry out “the building and prodding along of a fragile but effective coalition within his own party.”
Mediating between the progressives and moderates within the Democratic Party is the only “bipartisanship” now possible, and I guess you can call it that, if you write off the Republican Party and view the Democratic factions as our only real parties. Which isn’t altogether unreasonable, now that the Republican Party has effectively withdrawn from civilized discourse and positioned itself as (a) anti-democracy and (b) the reinvigorated Ku Klux Klan.
From the progressives’ perspective, CNN sees things this way:
The Biden presidency is where they are now, and they’d better not forget how they got there. Progressives, in particular, had better take whatever they can get from it, and whatever he’s able to get them, because that’s all they’re going to get. There isn’t more to be obtained from our fractured politics, at least not in his first two years. They also need to consider the Republican Party, although in disrepute, isn’t dead — nor is Trump’s white nationalist movement. If the Democratic unity that defeated them in 2020 dissolves, they could return to power, worse than ever.
The bottom line, in CNN‘s words, is that “Biden, of course, can only do so much.” Even that requires almost every Democratic vote in the House, and every Democratic vote in the Senate. At least two or three Democratic senators aren’t on board with many of the major items on the progressive wishlist, so quite simply, progressives don’t have the votes to enact their agenda even if Biden is willing to sign it into law.
Where Biden needs to go from here is down a path the country supports, and to get the progressives in Congress to follow along with him. They should listen when he tells them what’s possible, because without him they’ll get nothing, and without them he’ll get nothing done. And there’s so much that needs doing — getting us through the pandemic, reviving the economy, dealing with climate change, building for the future, immigration and police reforms, voting rights, overcoming racism, and much more. They have a president who is in sympathy with them on these issues. They won’t if the internal divisions within the Democratic Party hamstring Biden and enable the GOP to return to power.