I just wrote that President Joe Biden just gave a master class on how to get legislation through with a razor thin majority. And right now, he’s holding another master class, and if he keeps it up, it is going to pay big dividends in 2022. Sit back, put up your feet grab the munchies, and I’ll explain.
From day one, Biden ran earnestly and constantly on three interlocking themes, Bipartisanship, making the federal government work for the people again, and healing and uniting the country. Biden just made good on getting government to work again, by getting most of the country $1400 checks, and desperately needed Covid relief. But Biden is also making inroads into the other two categories, but you have to listen carefully, because he’s being almost subliminal about it. And nothing works like subliminal.
I was actually more fascinated by Biden’s remarks today after the Senate passed the Covid relief bill for how he said it, than what he actually said. Let me show you a few examples, and see if you get where I’m going.
- Biden never took personal credit for the passage of the bill. Biden seldom takes sole credit for anything. What a change from Trump, whom I’m pretty sure took credit for the 1969 lunar landing at some point in time. Instead, Biden lavished praise on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, for his patience, tenacity, and negotiating skills. Who else is there for Schumer to negotiate with except Republicans?
- In the same vein, Biden didn’t claim a Democratic victory in the passage, instead he said that the government finally worked for the American people again. What poppycock! The GOP opposed him every step, but with slick wording, he tarred them with a brush of bipartisanship that they are doing everything in their power to avoid.
- In a wonderful stroke, Biden distinctly defined bipartisanship. While noting that not a single GOP member of congress voted for the bill, he still insisted that it was a widely bipartisan bill, simply because the vast majority of Republican Governors and Mayors are on record supporting the bill. By redefining bipartisanship in easy to understand terms, Biden is making the GOP congressional caucus look like a bunch of rock heads
- And in all of his speeches, Biden is surgically precise in his wording. It is only in very specific, narrowly defined, usually concerning congress, that you hear the words Democrat and Republican pass Biden’s lips. Anytime that he refers to the country in general, or as a whole, it is always We the people, or The American people. On an almost daily basis, but nothing more than force of will, and power of suggestion, Biden is subliminally getting the message out that the country is uniting and healing
Now granted, Biden is getting a powerful assist from the social media platforms. By far and away, the most divisive figure in the United States is Donald Trump, and he’s dying on the vine trying to get his message out. And the GOP is floundering with that message without him. Just look at the recently completed CPAC freak show. They were so busy relitigating the 2020 election, savaging each other, and turning the phrase cancel culture as the new GOP bumper sticker, that they never laid a finger on Biden.
And the early evidence is that this is actually working. And here’s why I say that. A recent poll that I quoted a day or so showed that Biden’s approval rating among GOP voters is sitting at 44%. Forget about Trump for a moment, this is about Biden. If Biden has a 44% approval rating among GOP voters on anything, do you know what that means? It means that there are at least 44% of GOP voters out there that are actively listening to Joe Biden, and they don’t mind what they hear!
This is the buzz saw that the GOP is going to be running into in 2022. Biden got Covid relief through, and people love it. He will also get through a massive infrastructure plan, with or without GOP support, which most Americans will also love. It is also highly likely that Biden will get a minimum wage hike of somewhere around $12 an hour through, with GOP support. Biden will be on a roll.
And he’ll have set the table for the Democrats in 2022. Let Biden continue to show our solidarity as a people, it will be up to the Democratic 2022 House and Senate challengers to almost gleefully bring up every, single, negative vote that their GOP incumbent opponents cast over things that their own constituents love, and let them pay the price. In politics, messaging is everything, but the message has to be right. And right now, Joe Biden is nailing it to the wall.
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The Biden administration is redefining the concept of bipartisanship. I saw a piece on another website where Ms. Psaki schooled some RW “journalist” in the same way, albeit a bit more bluntly than President Biden did today. But the message was the same – that whatever the elected Republicans on Capitol Hill are saying and doing (opposing ANYTHING the administration is trying to accomplish) with every fiber of their being and voting NO in lockstep out in the country, or in Ms. Psaki’s dig “outside of a single zip code” (referring to Capitol Hill) there is strong bipartisan support for this bill and this administration, including Republican support. Out in the country as a whole.
This is what happens when you have actual professionals in the WH Communications shop who also talk with counterparts over in the Congressional leadership staff and the DNC. Instead of right wing propagandists from Faux Nooz who Trumped liked on his magic tee vee box. I have a feeling that maybe for once we are going to see coordinated messaging on our side for a change. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have everyone on our side repeating the same talking points redefining bipartisanship NOT as what GOP Congress Critters vote for our stuff but all the Governors, Mayors and regular people out in the country that support this or that piece of legislation or policy! I think so.
And maybe, just maybe given what happened in that press conference earlier this week and with what the President said today it’s been decided that this will be how our side is going to handle the “bipartisan question” moving forward. (I’m still pissed at Machin and hope I’m not the only one that called his office and pointed out that the Gov.of his state was strongly in favor of the very stuff HE was making a fuss about. As you say Murf, GOP voters even in WV are going to like what happens with this bill and Manchin has made himself extremely vulnerable to Justice or another Republican that will hammer him on his dickishness with this bill!)
People in WV were letting Manchin know that *they’re* entirely in favor of the payments, and the extended UI payments (and they prefer the $400 version, TYVM).
We’re beginning to see how a professional legislator, rather than a professional thief, runs the White House.
Maybe I have big expectations, but I was hoping that Uncle Joe would really go big. Forgive $50,000 worth of student debt and declare that all residents in the US have free healthcare by executive order? Who in their mind would challenge that? I feel that bipartisanship is useless in this present time, because of PANDEMIC . Uncle Joe needs to go big and then bigger because of the Manchins and the Sinemas of the Senate will bind him again and again until the GOP wins next year.
You cannot simply go big by fiat. That is what dictators do.