{"id":173272,"date":"2021-02-08T02:35:30","date_gmt":"2021-02-07T23:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/biden-is-using-the-obama-trump-playbook-not-seeking-unity\/"},"modified":"2021-02-08T02:35:30","modified_gmt":"2021-02-07T23:35:30","slug":"biden-is-using-the-obama-trump-playbook-not-seeking-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/biden-is-using-the-obama-trump-playbook-not-seeking-unity\/","title":{"rendered":"#Biden is using the Obama-Trump playbook, not seeking unity"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Biden is using the Obama-Trump playbook, not seeking unity<\/strong>”
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As an American, I wish President Biden every success in defeating the pandemic and getting the economy moving again. But when it comes to the dysfunction of our political system and the polarized climate general<\/a>ly, it\u2019s becoming clear he\u2019s part of the problem, not the solution.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think this is deliberate. No doubt Biden believes he\u2019s doing right as he sees it. He\u2019s also probably sincere about his desire to detoxify our politics by pushing for some gauzy notion of \u201cunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The real problem isn\u2019t the player, it\u2019s the game<\/a>. Over the last half-century, the parties have separated from each other like oil and water in a centrifuge.<\/p>\n

As Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report notes, Americans \u201cdon\u2019t even agree on the same set of problems.\u201d She points to data from the Pew Research Center that illuminate the divide.<\/p>\n

According to Pew, \u201cIn 1999, improving the educational system topped the list of priorities for both Republicans and Democrats, and four of the top five issues for Republicans were listed among the Democrats\u2019 top five issues as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTen years later,\u201d Pew researchers report, \u201cin the wake of the financial crisis, three issues (economy, jobs and terrorism) topped the list among both Republicans and Democrats (although they ranked them slightly differently).\u201d As of 2019, there was \u201cnot one overlapp<\/a>ing priority between the top five priorities for Democrats and those of Republicans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heap as much scorn as you like on President Donald Trump, but his legislative agenda was largely dedicated to giving Republicans what they wanted. It looked deeply partisan because it was. In a country where there is a lot of consensus about what to do, it\u2019s easy for a president to pick an issue that\u2019s popular in both parties. It\u2019s harder when few such issues exist. That\u2019s one reason George W. Bush started his presidency by working with Sen. Ted Kennedy and the Democrats on education reform.<\/p>\n

Biden isn\u2019t following Bush\u2019s example. He\u2019s following his two immedia<\/a>te predecessors, President Barack Obama and Trump. Though, so far, it\u2019s mostly been through executive orders.<\/p>\n

To be clear, I disagree with most of the policies Biden has announced, but my point isn\u2019t about policy; it\u2019s about politics. As it stands, it looks like the Biden administration would rather push a COVID-19 relief package on a straight party-line vote than agree to some bipartisan compromise package that didn\u2019t \u201cgo big\u201d as defined by the Democratic base.<\/p>\n

Even if Biden is right about the need for a $1.9 trillion bill, the cost will be more than economic if he crams it through with only Democratic votes.<\/p>\n

In 2009, Obama pushed through a stimulus bill with no Republican support in the House and only three Republicans in the Senate. At the time, Obama didn\u2019t think he needed Republican support. And as a matter of vote-counting, he was right, given the Democratic majorities.<\/p>\n

But he could have gotten Republican votes. Obama was very popular when he took office. Republican strategists at the time told me that if Obama had offered Republicans real buy-in, he easily could have gotten enough votes to make the stimulus bipartisan. Obama thought he already made concessions to the GOP on the substance. What he didn\u2019t appreciate is that to get participation from the opposition, the opposition needs to be included in the process, not handed an ultimatum.<\/p>\n

As a result, Obama owned the stimulus politically. And when the stimulus failed to stimulate, the Republicans could run against \u201cthe Obama economy\u201d in the midterms. They did, leading to a landslide rout of the Democrats. The stimulus led directly to the GOP\u2019s obstructionist stance throughout the Obama presidency.<\/p>\n

When you push major legislation on a party-line basis, the opposing party has no incentive to provide cover for it. Moreover, as Walter writes, \u201cit alienates not just those in the other party, but it may fail to attract independent voters. If only one side is willing to defend it \u2014 and the other side is busy trashing it \u2014 well, that law can become pretty unpopular, very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden may not need Republicans to get the legislation he wants right now, but he needs at least some of them to get the \u201cunifying\u201d politics he wants.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Biden is using the Obama-Trump playbook, not seeking unity” As an American, I wish President Biden every success in defeating the pandemic and getting the economy moving again. But when it comes to the dysfunction of our political system and the polarized climate generally, it\u2019s becoming clear he\u2019s part of the problem, not the solution….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":173273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/02\/Biden.COVID-19.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[18203,92314,87119,4941,991,70472],"class_list":["post-173272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-2-7-21","tag-bipartisanship","tag-donald-trump","tag-joe-biden","tag-presidency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}