On Sunday September twentieth, two days after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden gave a heartfelt declaration to the Republicans in Congress in which he implored them to “Please follow your conscience. Don't vote to confirm anyone nominated under the circumstances President Trump and Senator McConnell have created. Don't go there. Uphold your constitutional duty, your conscience, let the people speak." This was a perfectly reasonable request, especially because that same Senate refused to allow then President Barack Obama to fill a similar vacancy back in twenty sixteen. Biden even used the same argument that Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell used back then: let the voters decide.
We all know how Biden's plea turned out. President Donald Trump and the Republicans in the Senate moved forward on filling the nomination, without even shrugging at the brazen hypocrisy they were showing in their quest for political power.
Although I don't fault Biden for attempting to appeal to the conscience of the Republican Senators, anyone who follows politics should not have been surprised at the Republicans completely ignoring his pleas. When it comes to attaining raw power, the Republican party has no conscience. That is especially true when it comes to appointing judgeships; McConnell and the rest of the party know full well that the country's growing diversity and progressive younger citizens will mostly reject the aging, almost entirely white Republican party. Lifetime judicial appointments can slow that tide.
Joe Biden first entered the Senate way back in nineteen seventy two, and in his speeches he often waxes nostalgic about the warmer and more convivial nature of the Senate back then, which often extended even beyond party affiliation. I think he may be right about this; it should be remembered that it was the Republican party finally turning on the criminal behavior of Richard Nixon that forced him to resign. Yes, once upon a time, a political party was willing to sacrifice their own leader for the good of the country. Imagine that.
So what happened? Why has our country become so polarized that there appears that there is nothing that Trump can say or do that would cause his party to turn on him? Well, there have been several big changes that have occured since the days of Watergate.
First, when Ronald Reagan moved the Republican party rightward, he forged an alliance with Christian fundamentalists who were (and still are) unrepentant in their literal demonization of their political opponents. And as those fundamentalists gained more and more power in the party, they pushed harder and harder against compromising on their core issues.
And then the late eighties saw the rise of Rush Limbaugh, who with his mixture of insults, bigotry, misogyny and conspiracy theories about the Democrats, helped push the party further to the right and away from any kind of reconciliation with the other side. As he grew more popular, an entire right media sprung up that aped his hardline rhetoric.
Another sea change came in nineteen ninety four, when the Republican party retook the House of Representatives for the first time since the nineteen fifties, led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich who had a brutal, cut throat approach to politics. Now it wasn't just people like Limbaugh calling the Democrats "corrupt" or "fascist", it was an elected official, third in line to the President, no less. Under Gingrich the House would shutdown the government twice and push for then President Bill Clinton's impeachment even as most of the country opposed it. Although Gingrich's leadership would have mixed results, his take no prisoners style of politics still influences the Republican party to this day.
And with the right wing media (and social network) still screaming while people like Gingrich still run the Republican party, it seems like there will never be a time like the one that Biden entered into back in the seventies. So while I sorta admire Biden's stated belief that after Trump is gone, the sane members of the Republican party will see how terrible it was to support him and be ready to move forward in a bipartisan way, I also think it's extremely naive. Trump is just the ultimate extension of the modern Republican party; they won't improve once he's gone. For proof of that, Biden shouldn't have to look any further than the bitter way that the party dealt with President Obama for eight years: they gave him nothing and refused to sacrifice an inch.
What I think Biden needs to do if he wins is to ignore the Republicans as much as possible. If the Democrats emerge from the upcoming election with not only the White House but also but houses of congress, they need to push their advantage as much as they can. That means that they should pack the Supreme Court with progressive judges, abolish the filibuster in the Senate and grant statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. If the Republicans can only play hardball, then it's time for the Democrats to respond in kind. Compromise and bipartisanship are nice ideas, but these days they are just relics of a bygone time.
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