These days, Washington is hanging on every word of Vice President Joe Biden as speculation over his presidential ambitions reaches its apex. Biden raised eyebrows on Monday when he said, “I don’t consider Republicans enemies, they’re friends” — seen as a rejoinder to Hillary Clinton’s comment during the first Democratic debate that she considers Republicans her enemies.
Over at Vox, Ezra Klein argues that this is actually Biden’s best asset against Clinton. “If Biden does run for president, this is likely to be the core rationale for his campaign,” Ezra writes. “The next Democratic president is going to be facing a Republican House and will need to work with Republicans to get big things done. Hillary Clinton is loathed by Republicans, and she loathes them back — working with people she describes as enemies is not likely to be her strong suit.”
He goes on to write about how it was Biden who played a central role in negotiating deals with Republicans to resolve the fiscal cliff and debt ceiling standoffs. This is something I’ve also had Republicans tell me — that Biden was the only one at the White House that Mitch McConnell was able to work with constructively.
Though Ezra is very plugged in to the thinking in Democratic circles, he’s why I’m skeptical that this will help Biden in a primary against Clinton.
My impression is that right now, the Democratic electorate believes that Republicans are intransigent, that they cannot be worked with, and that Obama’s presidency was at its weakest when he tried to deal with GOP leaders in Congress. They thought he caved into Republican hostage takers with the debt limit deal, that he extended too many of the Bush tax cuts, and that he wasn’t assertive enough in pushing for more stimulus. They were happiest with Obama’s presidency when he drew a line in the sand in dealing with Republicans and began taking more aggressive executive actions.
Right now, as I wrote in my latest column, liberals believe that the demographics of the nation have changed to the point at which the country is moving much closer to them ideologically, and thus, they are not in a mood to compromise.
Ezra is correct, substantively, that were he elected, Biden would better positioned to work with Republicans than Clinton. But politically speaking, in this Democratic primary, it seems that Clinton’s vow to go even further on executive actions than Obama and treat Republicans as her enemies would have more resonance than Biden happy talk about working with the other side.
