There is a truism that says that much of the way that the media covers politics is not unlike how it covers sports; there are winners and losers, and polls showing who's up and who's down, with analysts often asking which political side scored a victory with each new development. It's understandable that the media would use this quickly digestible style of coverage, but it leaves out all sense of nuance. Obviously, there has never been a sports team where certain members of one team decide to play for the other side "for the good of the country."
But bipartisanship is dead, right? If you listen to the media, it sure is; the country is deeply divided, both sides are dug in, Biden will get no Republican help for his agenda, etc. And yet, a recent bill to make it easier to investigate and prosecute hate crimes against Asians sailed through congress, passing with ninety four votes in the Senate and three hundred and sixty four votes in the House. Ok, you might say that voting for a bill against the terrible spate of crimes being carried out against Asian Americans is a no brainer. No sane person could possibly be opposed to such a thing. But another recent bill was also passed with overwhelming (sixty eight votes) support in the Senate, and it's the kind of big spending bill that you would think the Republican party would never go for, but they were willing to cross the aisle for this one. Designed as a counterbalance to China's growing influence in scientific research, it would spend nearly a quarter-trillion dollars over the next five years on research into things like superconductors. While the bill has yet to pass the house, given its popularity (heck, even Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell voted for it!) and Joe Biden's willingness to sign it, its passage is assured.
So a bipartisan bill designed to help the country in the future will soon be passed. This would seem to be a good news story, which may explain why there has so little media coverage of it. Our competition driven media, so obsessed with winners and losers, barely seemed to have time for something that drew the two parties together. No they'd rather talk about how gridlocked congress is, and how much Senator Joe Manchin's refusal to end the filibuster is killing Biden's agenda.
Look, I complain about the filibuster and our divided nation as much as anybody, but as these two bill show, bipartisanship for the good of the country is not always an impossible dream. Hopefully, there will be more of it in the future.
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