Bipartisanship, in the sense of Republicans and Democrats cooperating to solve problems, seems to have been a passing phenomenon in American history, a product of a different time, and no longer with us.
A Columbia University historian (profile here), in a CNN op-ed (here), isn’t shedding tears over its passing. She labels bipartisanship a “fetish” and a “myth,” and asserts it has “never been a virtue,” only virtue-signaling.
She contends it has a lingering glowing reputation only because, for a while, “it was more attainable, and because at times, the results were profoundly beneficial.” The examples she cites are the Social Security Act, Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Medicare, and Medicaid, all enacted when the parties had liberal and conservative wings, before they “sorted” into ideological camps.
But, she says, there are negative examples, too: The wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan; the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of accommodating gays in the military (details here); and the anti-gay marriage “Defense of Marriage Act” enacted by Congress but rejected by the Supreme Court (details here).
This is how she characterizes the history of the post-bipartisanship era: Republicans discovered the power of withholding bipartisanship during the Obama era, and Democrats realized the limits of working with Republicans in the Trump era. The end of bipartisanship became clear when House Republicans refused to certify Biden’s election win, defended the Capitol rioters, and sought to thwart investigations of the insurrection. This, she says, “confirms that bipartisanship is a useless metric.”
Her essay ends there, without discussing the Senate filibuster, so I’ll add my thoughts on that subject.
Which are: The filibuster is a relic of the bipartisan era, now used as a weapon to obstruct the majority from governing. It’s also redundant, as the GOP already disproportionate voting power in Congress, far beyond what it earned at the ballot box, thanks ruthless gerrymandering of House seats and inherently unequal representation in the Senate. (The 50 Republican senators collectively received 41 million fewer votes than the 50 Democratic senators.) The minority party doesn’t need or deserve a filibuster on top of that, and with bipartisanship gone, it serves no useful purpose. So why retain it?
It’s being retained, for now, because 2 Democratic senators still hew to the ideology of bipartisanship despite its absence from current legislative process. Voters can fix this by electing enough Democrats to overcome minority obstruction. If they don’t, they’re likely to live under a tyranny of the minority, because a drive to empower gerrymandered minority-ruled legislatures to throw out election results is already underway.