JOE BIDEN AND "BI-PARTISANSHIP"

What Joe Biden needs to understand- and I hope he does- is that the word "bi-partisan" has no meaning when you are dealing with an existential threat- people who literally want to kill you at worst, and in lesser cases, people who want you to fail so badly that they are willing to sabotage any program to help Americans.   

In the case of QAnon supporters, including at least two recently elected members of Congress, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, you can not negotiate with them, as they are lunatics who are followers of and believers in people like Valerie Gilbert, a QAnon meme leader who considers Democrats satanists, pedophiles and cannibals who want to drink the blood of children:

"Every morning, Valerie Gilbert, a Harvard-educated writer and actress, wakes up in her Upper East Side apartment; feeds her dog, Milo, and her cats, Marlena and Celeste; brews a cup of coffee; and sits down at her oval dining room table.

Then, she opens her laptop and begins fighting the global cabal. 

 Ms. Gilbert, 57, is a believer in QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory.  Like all QAnon faithful, she is convinced that the world is run by a Satanic group of pedophiles that includes top Democrats and Hollywood elites, and that President Trump has spent years leading a top-secret mission to bring these evildoers to justice.

She unspools this web of falsehoods on her Facebook page, where she posts dozens of times a day, often sharing links from right-wing sites like Breitbart and The Epoch Times or QAnon memes she has pulled off Twitter. On a recent day, her feed included a rant against Covid-19 lockdowns, a grainy meme accusing Congress of “high treason,” a post calling Lady Gaga a Satanist and a claim that “covfefe,” a typo that Mr. Trump accidentally tweeted three years ago, was a coded intelligence message."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/qanon-meme-queen.html

As for the ephemera of "bi-partisanship," that would be a futile effort on President Biden's part.   The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky,  has demonstrated beyond question that he is willing to sacrifice the good of the country,  even the safety and welfare of his own citizens in Kentucky, in order to obstruct any program proposed by a Democratic president.   His most infamous quote after Barack Obama was elected made this clear: 

 "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."   

https://www.tevitroy.org/8245/mcconnell-under-fire

Although that effort failed- Obama was re-elected in 2012- McConnell led the Republicans, especially after they had retaken control of the Senate, to block any program that Obama wanted to pass to make this country better or safer.  That was true even after the horrific massacre of 26 people, including 20 children ages six and seven, in late 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.   When  President Obama in his 2013 State of the Union speech requested the Republican controlled Congress to pass legislation to protect society from lunatics like the killer at Sandy Hook from being able to purchase firearms, they ignored him.   Instead,  Republicans blocked any efforts to even get a bill to a committee to consider President Obama's request for instant background checks for firearm buyers.  That was a proposal supported by 90% of Americans, but the Republicans only cared about preventing a Democratic President from succeeding at anything, even at the cost of the lives of their own children.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/barack-obama-says-congress-lack-of-action-after-sandy-hook-was-angriest-day-of-his-presidency/ar-BB1aZD4v

  As for the House Republicans, there is scant hope that President Biden will be able to "reach across the aisle" to negotiate on important issues.   House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, although he criticized President T***p, refused to vote for impeachment of the president who incited a terrorist attack on Congress, sending McCarthy and everybody else into hiding while the terrorists were chanting "Hang Mike Pence," looking for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to kill her, and murdering a Capitol policeman who tried to block their assault.   

More telling,  McCarthy also voted to support the insurrectionists in their bid to overthrow democracy by joining 146 other Republicans- that's 70% of all Republicans in the House- who voted in the early morning hours of January 7th to refuse to accept the electoral votes from states that had cast their votes for Joe Biden, in their Quixotic quest  to overthrow the election and give the presidency to the loser.  This was shortly after the representatives had come out  their safe spaces where they had hidden for hours while the insurrectionists had taken over the Capitol in their T***p incited effort to overthrow the election results.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/07/us/elections/electoral-college-biden-objectors.html

Even temporary patriot Liz Cheney of Wyoming, son of Dick, who voted for impeachment and made clear that President T***p orchestrated an insurrection against the country and against democracy, has made vicious defamatory accusations against Democrats as a group.   In a memorable Meet the Press appearance in 2019, she said that Democrats are the party of "anti-Semitism and infanticide."    She was accusing all Democrats- including Jews like Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders,  Jamie Raskin,  and many others who serve in both houses of Congress, of hating Jews.   She was accusing all Democrats of a policy of killing babies after they were born.    These are both outrageous falsehoods and deserving of censure.

The upshot is that Joe Biden would serve his administration- actually, the country- better by proposing excellent legislative programs that will garner sufficient Democratic votes to pass, while  never making the mistake that Barack Obama did in 2009 to attract Republican votes.  In 2009 President Obama watered down his health insurance reform plan to attract Republican votes, even when Democrats had overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress.  The result was a bill that catered to private insurance companies, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies at the expense of patients.   It  was modeled after Mitt Romney's "Romneycare" plan from his governorship of Massachusetts, and most notably it lacked a public option while depending  on States with  Republican governors and Republican controlled legislatures to pass laws allowing Medicaid expansion.   Many, including Georgia and Florida,  refused the Federal funds and deprived their own citizens of access to health insurance to spite Obama.   

In spite of all of those concessions, the Affordable Care Act, referred to as Obamacare, failed to garner a single Republican vote.   

Biden was there as Vice President when this all went down.   Let's hope he learned that lesson well.   Be nice to Republicans.  Be friendly.   Talk to them.  Don't insult them publicly or treat them as enemies of the State or as less than human, as so many Republicans have treated Democrats.    But until they prove their good faith, never negotiate with them with the expectation that they would be willing to better the country if it means that there is the slightest chance of a public perception that your administration has succeeded at anything.   

Let them first prove their bona fide intentions to work in good faith to better this country  with public statements in support of effective legislation and with their votes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/qanon-meme-queen.html