Biden Must Go It Alone On The Stimulus
Republicans are trying to hold up Biden's legislative agenda, derail the stimulus and paint him as an extremist. They should be ignored.
(photo credit: Bloomberg)
by Ben Cohen
Irate that Joe Biden has been delivering on his campaign promises and undoing damage of the Trump administration, Republicans are now claiming that the President is destroying bipartisanship in America.
This is now routine in GOP circles:
The GOP memo has been circulated: attack Biden for being partisan, no matter how hypocritical we look.
This, one must remember, is the party responsible for Donald Trump: the White Nationalist inspired president who ignored a deadly pandemic, accused Democrats of wanting to destroy America and then organized a violent coup.
Republicans protected Trump no matter how egregious his crimes or how destructive to democracy it was. They know they have no leg to stand on. But this is what Republicans do.
The pretend stimulus compromise
Lecturing Biden on civility and working together is designed to play to the Fox News audience and deflect attention from their complicity in wrecking the country. Republican voters don’t want to take responsibility for Trump, and they want a bogeyman to point to. Sure our guy was bad, but look at Biden.
Just witness the latest preposterous stimulus proposal from 10 Republicans apparently committed to “bipartisanship”.
Led by Trump enabler Susan Collins, these 10 Senate Republicans have proposed a new stimulus package to counter Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan totaling $600 billion. “We want to work in good faith with you and your administration to meet the health, economic and societal challenges of the covid crisis,” the group wrote in a letter.
This is akin to stealing a million dollars, then offering the victim 300k back as a sign of good faith.
The GOP spat in the face of bipartisanship during the Trump years, and now they are expecting Democrats to cave to all their demands in the name of cooperation and “working together”.
The trap
Collins and her colleagues know Biden has to reject this ludicrous proposal and move instead to pass his stimulus package through budget reconciliation. So why make the offer? The answer, if you have paid attention to the Republican Party over the past two decades, is obvious.
Republicans want to paint Biden and the Democrats as extremist controlled by the radical left. When Biden inevitably rejects the proposal and moves to pass his own package, they can say that he rejected bipartisanship and embraced socialism.
This is an old game, and one the Democrats must ignore at all costs.
We are in the midst of a lethal pandemic and an economic crisis of almost unparalleled proportions. An adequate stimulus must be passed, and it must be passed immediately. Almost every respected economist and business leader has warned the White House that the cost of passing an inadequate stimulus would be catastrophic for the economy. In fact, see Biden’s plan as only a start given the enormous impact the Coronavirus has had on the economy.
“Both sides”
Republicans lecturing the Biden on working together have reminded Democrats that when Trump was in power, the liberals did everything they could to block Trump’s legislative agenda. Therefore they are only exercising due diligence when insisting Biden moderate his ambitions or acquiesce to their “reasonable” demands.
The reality however, is that the previous administration’s sole objective was to burn the infrastructure of government to the ground. In fact, they were quite explicit about it. Opposing Trump was not partisan behavior on the part of the Democrats, it was an attempt to preserve the basic functioning of US democracy.
Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump operated under the theory that power was to be attained at all costs, then mercilessly deployed. If you had leverage over an opponent, you used it without remorse, and without compromise. It wasn’t enough to beat the Democrats — they had to be destroyed and humiliated too.
Same game, different power dynamic
This might be the game Republicans created, but it is one they no longer control, and they are going to have to get used to it.
The Democrats now control the Presidency, the House, and the Senate and they must exercise their power remorselessly. The aim should be to crush the GOP until it can no longer fight back. The Republican Party has shown itself to be an existential threat to democracy, and it must be treated as such.
Biden and the Democrats should use different tactics to achieve the destruction of the GOP. Trump and McConnell’s policy of humiliation was clearly counterproductive given the huge losses they incurred in 2020, so the Democrats must be careful to not make a show of rebuffing Republicans and ignoring their demands.
Instead, they should do it quietly and quickly. Biden does not need to draw negotiations out or appeal publicly to Republicans to back his deal. He should focus on building rock solid party support, then ram it through using reconciliation. The same goes for all of Biden’s major policy goals for the next two years. He has a window of opportunity to reform the country, and leverage over the party that has refused to behave responsibly for decades.
Learning from history
If we have learned anything, it is that no matter what Democrats do, Republicans will scream blood murder. The Democrats, they insist, are radical socialists determined to turn the country into a Venezuelan style dictatorship. The fact that they are using these shopworn tactics against Biden — one of the most moderate Democrats in history — is a testament to how deranged they have become.
The lesson is clear: you cannot negotiate in good faith with Republicans.
By ignoring them and acting decisively, Biden will be able to rescue the economy from the abyss, drastically improve the Affordable Care Act, and restore America’s standing in the world. There is little risk in taking these bold decisions while the Democrats control all branches of government, and they will pay dividends later.
President Obama spent far too much time negotiating with himself during his first term, tying himself in knots crafting legislation he believed Republicans would go for. Republicans shot down an extremely moderate stimulus plan, and the government’s weakened response to the financial crash in 2008 dragged out the recover by years. Biden has no partners to work with across the aisle, and pretending he does only will only prolong the misery. He can exercise his newfound power silently, claim victory carefully, then move on before Republican hysteria even gets going.
President Biden’s legacy will be defined by the actions he takes in the immediate wake of Donald Trump’s departure. He is off to a good start, but he must always remember the game Republicans play.
You bring a gun to a gun fight, and you don’t stop shooting.
Read the latest for Banter Members:
How 'Conspirituality' Wrecked The Wellness World And Destroyed Our Response To COVID-19
Conspiracy theories are ripping apart the fabric of our society, and if we don't act soon the consequences could be fatal.
image: AFP/William West
by Ben Cohen
Over the past year, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time analyzing the various conspiracy theories that have taken off during the Coronavirus pandemic. I have also studied the personalities involved in creating and spreading these conspiracy theories, and have come to some alarming conclusions.
I believe that society is experiencing an unprecedented mental health crisis that is manifesting itself through these increasingly rabid conspiracy theory movements. There has also been a convergence of far right conspiracy theory and New Age spiritualism — or “Conspirituality” — that is widening the reach of these once fringe communities.
The consequences for society are grave, and it is vital we understand how this happened, and what we can do about it.
The conspiracy coup
The attempted coup in Washington earlier this month was driven almost entirely by ‘QAnon’ inspired conspiracy theories promoted by far right media and New Age charlatans.
From Trump’s false claim that Biden had stolen the election to the Deep State pedophile rings in government and rabid Covid-19 denialism, the mob of protestors genuinely believed they were engaging in an epic war between Good and Evil.
This so called war would rid the government of the Satanic Democrats, free millions of children in slavery, end the “plandemic”, and bring back the savior of Western civilization, Donald Trump, to his rightful position as leader of the free world. Q, who is supposedly a government insider posting cryptic messages in far right internet chat rooms, is central to all of this. Q’s followers had been waiting for “the storm” — an event where all of the prophecies would come true.
Atlantic journalist Adrienne LaFrance spent considerable amount of time investigating the QAnon phenomenon, told NPR back in August of 2020 that:
“The basic idea is that we are in the calm before the storm. The storm is the moment where Trump will, as a sort of savior figure, come in and initiate mass arrests or otherwise sort of comeuppance for this evil cabal and that on the other side of the storm is a great awakening for society and to sort of put the country back on track in Q's terms.”
Thousands of Q followers believed this and stormed the Capitol building on January 6th in an attempt to help Trump fulfill his mission. The coup failed, but theory still held that Trump would still turn things around. Lin Wood, a Trump lawyer and prominent conspiracy theorist continued posting on Parler promising all was actually going to plan. His posts were indicative of the paranoid, fantastical thinking prevalent in Q communities:
What “evidence” Wood was referring to is anyone’s guess, but unsurprisingly no information was revealed, Trump did not have anyone arrested, he did not eliminate income tax, and has now flown off to Florida where he is currently preparing for his impeachment trial in the Senate.
Where did this all come from?
Since the 1960s and 70s, New Age and wellness communities have been plagued with fraudulent characters making unproven claims to their often highly susceptible followers. Based on the concept of personal transformation and healing for a ‘new age’ of human awakening, these communities have incorporated a hodgepodge of spiritual concepts and health treatments into a broader philosophies that have been commercialized by budding entrepreneurs…
This is an excerpt from this week’s Members Only article. Get a 50% discount on a Banter Membership and read the full article here.
The Party of Personal Responsibility™, my ballsack! Fuck those motherfucking Republican assholes!
They're behaving like the spoiled rotten children who are finally being told NO, and they had fucking better start getting used to it! I'm confident that Joe Biden will flex his muscles on the GOP and tell them "my way or the highway!"
Biden had spent eight years as Barack Obama's vice president, and he has seen, up close and personal, the destructive evil Republicans have done to the Capitol and America. Add to that the four years of the grossly and dangerously incompetent Drumpf, and they are in absolutely no position to dictate the terms the country should take. Because they have no power whatsoever!
The adults are in charge now, brats! Time for you to grow the fuck up!