The Stanford marshmallow experiment tested children’s ability and willingness to forgo an immediate reward of either a marshmallow or a pretzel (who would opt for the pretzel?) if, by doing so, they could get two of them later on.
Democrats have taken the one.
That they decided to do coronavirus relief by themselves with budget reconciliation means the Democrats won’t have to give up much, if anything, here on the front end of Biden’s tenure, and it’s already paying off for them: The initial bill out of the House Education and Labor Committee has nearly $130 billion for schools, and it increases the minimum wage to $15 per hour, both Biden priorities that would have either been dead on arrival or would have had to be negotiated down if Republicans were involved.
Yet, it’s fairly easy to see how their decision not to delay gratification, even if it meant just acting like they were interested in negotiations with Republicans for another few weeks, was the wrong one.
It made little political sense for Democrats to pass their budget resolution one day after Senate Republicans met with Biden at the White House to negotiate. Coronavirus relief had as good or better of a chance of bipartisan compromise than any of the Democrats’ other high-dollar priorities, and so it makes Biden, whose campaign was in word and spirit all about unity, bipartisanship, healing, and the rest, look like he was really full of it all along. Perhaps he was — it wouldn’t be novel.
There are several explanations for Democrats’ lack of forbearance on negotiations. This is politics, for one. When you have the power, you use it. There are also the pressures imposed by the pandemic, those imposed by their own electoral promises, and from their obtrusive liberal base. But resorting to reconciliation so quickly creates its own unique pressures.
Rahm Emanuel, who was President Barack Obama’s chief of staff and a mayor of Chicago (and whom Biden is reportedly considering for an ambassadorship), has been pointing to the risks here. “Because many voters view bipartisanship as a core part of [Biden’s] character, abandoning it risks undermining his central appeal to swing voters and others,” Emanuel wrote in an op-ed. It’s true, and Biden belabored the point during his presidential campaign.
Even so, Emanuel suggests that abandoning bipartisanship is a decision that Biden will have to face in various ways down the road, but that’s what he has done already.
“If senators come to believe that the president is stiff-arming Republicans, Mr. McConnell will more easily convince his GOP colleagues to join him in obstructing the rest of the president’s agenda,” Emanuel writes. But McConnell doesn’t need to convince Republicans of anything. Democrats are demonstrably stiff-arming them on this. After all Biden’s posturing, they got one meeting.
The Democrats are banking on the package to do the talking. It has polled well among independents. Perhaps that will overpower the partisanship of it and voters will reward them in 2022. But Biden is already giving Republicans evidence that he was not who he said he was and that he will not govern as he said he would.
Either way, it’s difficult to see how they can commit to negotiating with Republicans on immigration, healthcare, energy and climate, and other important issues, considering how much gas they burned to do COVID-19 relief alone. It would take quite a reorientation to get all you want and then have to work hard to get only half, or less. And they certainly can’t reconcile their entire agenda into law.
