A New Era of Bipartisanship?

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Seriously?

Please permit me to go out on a limb, and pardon a dose of optimism.

After Trump finally exits, there could be a surprising amount of bipartisanship when it comes to dealing with COVID and reviving a devastated economy. And that could help detoxify our democracy.

Republican senators as well as Democratic ones have constituents who are mightily suffering and states whose revenues are in free fall. They have school districts that can’t pay teachers and transit systems drastically cutting services, businesses that are closing and unemployed people without health insurance.

With Trump gone, a purely artificial source of partisan demonization is gone, too. You can already see a much-diminished Trump looking a lot smaller, as he prepares to slink out of the White House.

Wait, wasn’t this an era of deepening partisan polarity for decades before Trump? Yes, but circumstances alter cases. This is a true national emergency. Republicans hated FDR, but they supported him after Pearl Harbor.

But what about Mitch McConnell? Won’t he continue to stymie Biden, hoping to make him fail? And won’t Trump be howling and revving up his base?

I predict a quiet Senate Republican Caucus revolt against McConnell. There may not be enough mainstream Republicans left to deny Trump the nomination in 2024, assuming he is not in prison. But there are enough pragmatist GOP senators to demand help for suffering constituents.

I learned something about this latent bipartisanship when I researched this piece about the stunning success of Elizabeth Warren, no less, in enlisting conservative Republican co-sponsors on consumer and investor protection bills. They included Tom Coburn (OK), Bob Corker (TN), Tom Cotton (AR), Chuck Grassley (IA), John Kennedy (LA), Thom Tillis (NC), and David Vitter (LA), as well as moderate Lisa Murkowski (AK).

There are surely ten Republican senators who will insist to McConnell that it’s time to check the partisan guns at the door and get large sums to help suffering Americans. As a harbinger, you could see the sheer relief in the return to normalcy, as one Republican after another demanded that Trump give it up.

Emergency bipartisanship might even be contagious, and healing for democracy itself.

Have a happy Thanksgiving. We can be thankful that democracy (barely) held. Now it needs to be reclaimed.

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