'Bipartisan' Means They're Doing It Wrong

By Cody Fenwick, Alternet

When Joe Biden ran for president, he touted his history in the Senate and as vice president of making deals across the aisle and working with Republicans. He said that he would be able to productively cooperate with the GOP if he were elected — and that the fierce partisan divisions would cool.

“With Donald Trump out of the way, you’re going to see a number of my Republican colleagues have an epiphany,” he said in November 2019. “Mark my words.”

And it’s not just Biden. Many Democrats, especially the more conservative members of the coalition, hold up bipartisanship as a virtue in itself, much more often than Republicans do.

But about eight months into the Biden presidency, this strategy isn’t paying dividends. Arguably, it’s been dramatically weakening the Democrats’ strategic position and backfiring on them.