Bipartisanship
Dear Judy,
I just want to let you know that I’m here for you on your problem with bipartisanship, and to apologize for not being there for you when you were struggling so with your problem with her emails.
As far as I’ve been able to determine, to date: Partisans were a subspecies of humans found mostly in the forests of middle-europe during the mid-twentieth century. I did use were, but, to be honest, it isn’t known for certain whether or not they are extinct. Skeletal remains of both male and female adults, and partial skeletal remains of what are thought to be teenagers, are still being found today. Here’s the thing, breeding pairs of partisans were known as bipartisans. Isn’t that exciting? There is no historical record, at least none that I could find on Google, of how and where they reared their young. So, this remains an unknown at this time.
I hope this helps. Again, my apologies for letting you down on the her emails thing.
Sincerely yours,
A. Viewer
Ken, I have to comment.
Democrats should use consistency with science and widespread public opinion as the barometer of good governance — not the level of bipartisanship. “Bipartisanship On Hold” (maybe extinct)
https://tinyurl.com/y3eo2aa5
J.P.
You did what I wanted to be when in high school studying architecture at a an boys college prep school in Chicago. Along the way to doing so, the Marine Corp, marriage, some erroneous advice interfered and I became what I am today. Not that I am totally dissatisfied, I just did not get what I wanted. It cause you to wonder the “what if?” Successful but on a different path. I was a Vice Chair for a Township Planning Commission.
The one thing I had learned over the years is do not react. On the commission I kept my mouth shut, said what was necessary, and asked the needed questions when everyone was objecting to Mixed-Village-Use being planned for several hundred acres of land. The residents wanted it to be left an open field, the builders wanted apartments and single family, and commercial interests waned a Sams to compete with the Costco in the commercial area near two major highways (where it fit nicely across from a life-style mall). We gave them a little of each minus the big-box store. 2008 interceded and now Covid. Eventually, it will be built. I have asked for a Good-neighbor ordinance to be installed to protect from Walmart leaving their carcasses around.
In a way the Dem in a majority Republican county did well in a bipartisan manner. They got their development which I helped to modify.
I have to say I don’t understand any of this, but in a different way than the way I don’t understand anything. So I’ll make a few potentially off-topic notes.
My uncle became an alderman in Cicero which is I think a suburb of Chicago because he wanted to build a playground for kids. He had to quit because the death threats were too upsetting to his family. I think they may have been bipartisan. Bi-partisan and non-partisan have become warning signs to me that skulduggery is afoot. Either the paid liars found in non-partisan think tanks, or the sell-your-soul democrats who brag about their bi-partisan accomplishments in Congress.
On the other hand I served on an environmental affairs adisory board for my local county and I can’t remember anyone asking about party affiliation. So maybe I was a non-partisan myself. We actually changed the mind of an older-Repiblican who was a county commissioner. I do remember when some Republicans could see reason if it was presented to them without far-Left rhetoric.
As for “consistency with science”… well, i don’t think the mission of science is to be consistent with anything except observable nature, and I am quite sure most people don’t know what they are talking about when they talk about “science.” Which is why I don’t trust “public opinion” as a guide for policy.
You’d think that would leave me out in a truly non partisan wilderness, but I believe all this inconsistency can be worked out if people began by being a little less sure of themselves.
Ken,
They rear their young the same way they were reared…by example. It works better than any known teaching method short of waterboarding. Unfortunately it leaves us where we were when we started the last thousand year reich.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/opinion/mitch-mcconnell-bipartisan.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Ken
one reason I hate links unsupported by any reason as to why i should bother to click it, is that clicking it leads to an invitation to log on to some site, no doubt creating a user name and password that either I or the site in question will forget by the next time i try to use it. and similar aggravations.
and because i am an old fashinoed person who was taught (by E.A.Poe) that an essay ought to contain everything within itself necessary to understand it.
But I agree with the headline: McConnell doesn’t get [ought not to get] to define what bipartisan means. Since I don’t give a damn about bipartisan, this is not a big issue with me. But McConnell knows as well as I do that if he defines bipartisan, then 75 million people will take his word for it. Even my pretty-good democrat senators like to tout their bi-partisanship. Might explain why twenty years after I helped get them elected they haven’t accomplished a damn thing of any real value.
Mitch McConnell Doesn’t Get to Define ‘Bipartisan’
If 70 percent of Americans support a policy, including most Republicans, it is bipartisan — regardless of what some senators think about it.
Among the more farcical developments of the early Biden presidency has been congressional Republicans’ newfound passion for bipartisanship.
After years of Republican lawmakers treating Democrats’ concerns with all the respect of used Kleenex, reasonable observers might have assumed the G.O.P. disdained cross-party cooperation. Few legislators practice partisan obstructionism with the zeal of the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.
But with Democrats now holding unified, if narrow, control of government, Republicans have had an epiphany. Bipartisanship has become their North Star, their holy grail. Democrats need to aggressively move to reclaim the concept in a way that better serves not only their political aims but also the American people.
Calls for bipartisanship occurred the moment President Biden took office. The early wave of executive orders he signed spurred howls from Republicans, who denounced such unilateral action as a thumb in the eye of unity.
Mr. Biden’s staffing choices are being subjected to a comity litmus test as well. The nomination of Neera Tanden to head the Office of Management and Budget has stalled in the Senate — not because Ms. Tanden is ideologically radical or unqualified, but because she is known as a meanie on social media. Her Twitter pugilism demonstrates “exactly the kind of animosity that President Biden has pledged to transcend,” sniffed Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who is among those Ms. Tanden has attacked. A spokeswoman for Senator Mitt Romney of Utah expressed similar concern about the threat Ms. Tanden posed to “comity and respect.” Even Senator Joe Manchin, the conservative Democrat from West Virginia, has gotten in on the action, declaring his opposition to Ms. Tanden in the interest of charting “a new bipartisan course.”
But it’s the push to pass more Covid relief that seems to have really reminded Republicans how much they cherish bipartisanship. They charge that the president’s $1.9 trillion plan is too costly and not targeted enough. Few members of the minority in either chamber are expected to support it. The $600 billion counteroffer made by a group of Republican senators did not come close to meeting Mr. Biden halfway — much less meeting the magnitude of the crisis — and some Biden aides suspect Republicans are mostly looking to bog down negotiations, as in the Obama years. So Democrats are set to pass a bill using a maneuver known as reconciliation, which would allow the bill to pass with a simple majority of votes — i.e., without any Republicans.
During the Trump presidency, Republicans used reconciliation to pass tax cuts, and they tried, unsuccessfully, to use it to repeal key elements of Obamacare. Now they are denouncing the process as a thuggish affront to bipartisanship. Power-drunk Democrats aren’t even interested in compromise, they charge with conspicuous umbrage.
Senator Rob Portman, the Ohio Republican, has been especially outspoken on the matter. He recently lamented to CNN’s Dana Bash that Democrats passing a relief bill through reconciliation would “poison the well for other bipartisanship we will need on so many issues.” For those keeping track at home, Mr. Portman was among the senators who backed using reconciliation for the 2017 tax cuts and for gutting Obamacare.
Unencumbered by self-awareness, Mr. Portman expanded on his concerns in a Feb. 23 op-ed. “Biden faces an early choice,” Mr. Portman lectured. “He can act on the hopeful bipartisan rhetoric of his inaugural address — and his presidential campaign — or contradict that message by trying to jam a $1.9 trillion bill through reconciliation with no G.O.P. support.”
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Mr. Biden indeed ran on a pledge to unify America — to start draining the partisan poison from the body politic. It was a winning vision for a weary public. Republicans are clearly aiming to exploit that vision in their quest to block Mr. Biden’s agenda. Because if Republican lawmakers don’t sign on to a proposal, then a plan isn’t bipartisan. And for Mr. Biden to proceed with a plan that isn’t bipartisan, well, that’s a betrayal of his promise to the American people.
Opinion Debate What should the Biden administration prioritize?
William Ruger writes that “completely withdrawing our troops” from Afghanistan “is sound policy” and that Biden should stick to a withdrawal timeline that Trump negotiated.
David Roberts writes that the president should restore the Bears Ears National Monument, a “irreplaceable cultural treasure” of land sacred to Native Americans that his predecessor shrank considerably.
The Editorial Board writes that by improving plans for aid to families with children, “Democrats can pass a permanent change now by doing the hard but necessary work of figuring out how to pay for it.”
Gail Collins, Opinion columnist, writes that while one can appreciate that Joe Biden is busy, there’s “absolutely no reason we shouldn’t start to nag” on new gun control measures.
Got it?
Mr. Biden does face an early choice — just not the false one Mr. Portman presented. The president and his party should double down on the bipartisanship message, even as they redefine and refocus it away from Congress.
For a host of reasons — including the growing polarization and ideological extremism of members of Congress — the policies that a bipartisan majority of Americans favor often have little overlap with the positions their elected leaders stake out. All too often, even lawmakers who support a bill are bullied into opposing it by their leadership or threatened with retaliation by the more extreme, more intransigent elements of their party. Broadly popular policies fall victim to congressional game playing.
In recent years, for instance, there has been strong bipartisan support for modest gun control measures such as expanded background checks and red-flag laws, but Mr. McConnell’s Senate never got around to making those happen. Neither have lawmakers provided legislative relief to Dreamers, immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children, despite bipartisan public support for providing legal status and a path to citizenship.
Last August, the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy issued a report, based on a survey of more than 80,000 Americans, enumerating nearly 150 issues on which majorities of Democrats and Republicans agree. These range from raising the eligibility age for Social Security to creating a national registry for police misconduct, and from strengthening campaign finance laws to imposing congressional term limits.
As for Mr. Biden’s relief plan, currently awaiting congressional action: 76 percent of Americans, including 60 percent of Republicans, support it, according to a Morning Consult poll out Wednesday.
Going forward, Mr. Biden should think, and talk, about bipartisanship as it relates to the American public — not whether a few tribal warriors in Congress can be coaxed into crossing party lines. His team has explicitly nodded in this direction now and again. “Even with narrow majorities in Congress, he has the opportunity to build broad bipartisan support for his program — not necessarily in Congress but with the American people,” his adviser Anita Dunn told CNN in January, regarding Covid relief.
This should be the standard party line. If, say, 70 percent of the electorate supports a policy, including a majority of Republicans, it is bipartisan — regardless of what McConnell & Company think of it. By hammering home this more expansive definition, Mr. Biden can start nudging people — maybe even lawmakers — to think more in terms of a policy’s widespread appeal than about what the loudest voices on either side are demanding.
This would be a step toward making government work better for everyone. Except maybe Mr. McConnell.
Ken
Thanks for posting the full text. I agree- in a way – with most of it…because of the political reality of “bipartisan” as a jingle for the minds of the electorate {but I don’t think it will work, because the R’s will keep lying about it).
However, I come to full stop when the Times touts “raising the retirement age” because it has bipartisan support. It has bipartisan support because the liars who hate social security have been touting it since before Bill Clinton and Newt Gringrich fell in love
Raising the reitrement age would destroy the purpose of Social Security: which is insurance for people who get too old to work (whether they are going to live longer or not) or too old to get hired even if they still can work.
There is nothing stopping people who like their work, and are healthy enough to keep doing it, from working as long as they want. The minimum retirement age is not a mandatory retirement age. But for someone whose eyes are failing, or knees, or memory, or aggressiveness, or sanity, AND HAS PAID FOR HIS OWN DAMN RETIREMENT, there is no reason “we” should be able to say, “no, you must work for two more years. and if you can’t, or can’t find a job, why you should have read the fine print.”
Hooray for “bipartisanship.” After all, that the Framers never intended that “democracy” should be rule by the fooled… has become the latest reason that democrats and progressives have come up with to do away with the Constitution.