Sen. Susan Collins has long been friendly with Joe Biden, but says it was disappointing that he never negotiated with Republicans over the coronavirus bill:
She was part of a group of Republicans invited to an early meeting with President Biden in the Oval Office over coronavirus aid. But their proposal was never seriously considered by Democrats, who passed their own $1.9 trillion bill without a single Republican vote. Ms. Collins said she was frustrated by the brushoff and subsequent interactions.
“Why they would want to alienate the Republican most likely to work with them to find common ground is truly a mystery to me. And it’s obviously a very poor strategy,” she said in an interview.
I get why Collins is frustrated. From her point of view Republicans were steamrolled by an administration that claims to value bipartisanship.
But I wonder if she even realizes what really happened? And whose fault it was? Collins, as part of a group of ten Republican senators, came into negotiations with a proposal of $600 billion, about one-third of the Democratic number. There's no way that Democratic leaders could have considered this serious. To them, an opening bid so plainly out of sync with reality was nothing but an invitation to waste time on negotiations that would never go anywhere. So they bailed.
If Collins and the rest of her group had started out at, say, $1 trillion, and made it clear that they could be talked up, it's possible that Democrats would have been willing to meet with them, perhaps with the goal of ending up at $1.5 trillion or so. But $600 billion was a joke, maybe even a bit insulting. Collins really needs to understand what Democrats have been through with Republicans in the past before she complains that they decided not to waste time on an obviously unserious proposal from them yet again.
Collins's reaction is standard GQP. "Compromise" means Dems give in; Republicans get their way. "Bipartisanship" just means doing it the Republican way. This time, Biden and his fellow Democrats didn't bite. And good for them.
Lots of Republicans are going to be in for a real surprise in the coming years. So will the media pundits, who still can't wrap their heads around Democrats not giving in and not caring when they're told "That's NOT BIPARTISAN!!"
Winter is co--...
Array is coming.
"But I wonder if she even realizes what really happened?"
Yes. Yes, she does realize. But it's nice that you ascribe good faith to her in the face of the evidence.
+1
Honestly, Kevin is supposed to be able to recognize spin when he sees it. Collins is saying that the only way to reach a bipartisan compromise is to pass something that is close to what the GOP wants. However, she certainly knew that their proposal was totally inadequate so to keep her reputation as a "moderate" in the media, she complains about how unreasonable the Democrats are. Collins could have voted for the bill despite her reservations, perhaps even gotten some amendments. She didn't even try.
Honestly, you should be able to recognize rhetorical questions when they're asked.
Collins and her group of Republicans knew exactly what they were doing. They were engaging in bipartisanship theater. The lowball offer was deliberate and had its intended result. If they had made a serious offer they would have delayed the passage of the bill but in the end I doubt that even they would have voted for the “compromise”.
This way the bill passes and they get to cluck-cluck about how they tried to be bipartisan but their attempt was rejected, so Biden was never serious about that. They get to say they tried to compromise to satisfy their non alt-right voters and they get to say they voted against it to satisfy the alt-right voters.
+1
She wasted months on the ACA. Schumer didnt forget that. In the end she didn't vote for it anyway. Is our democrats learning?
The Democrats are either in Texas or Tennessee... 'cause they won't -- won't get fooled again.
I agree, but I also like to think they were probably gobsmacked that Biden didn't dither and jaw about it and she was expressing that surprise.
We never saw him committee, but what the public used to see of Biden was Garrulous Joe and Ingratiating Joe. Since maybe South Carolina last year, and especially since January 20, he's been more like Declarative Joe. No arguing with himself, no hemming and hawing, few qualifiers and caveats, mostly direct declarative statements.
I don't think this group quite appreciated what being president meant for him. After they came in with that outright and calculated insult-- basically they mooned him-- he wrote them out of the process completely. As they deserved and had asked for. So now, if they want to be listened to again, it's up to them to prove they deserve his attention. That's an extremely high bar to clear, a deep hole they dug for themselves. A president has only so much time and attention.
I'm really impressed that he gave them what they earned, let them bury themselves this way. It tells me he not only understands well what presidents can do that senators can't, but also that he's perfectly willing to do what the office empowers him to do, in order to achieve what he thinks the country needs, and former relationships won't detain him.
That's more than thought I'd get when I voted for him, frankly, but I like it.
And isn't it interesting that Biden's position on the filibuster changed since this meeting happened?
The ten who went in could have been the key group to break filibusters on current rules. Instead they came in and defecated on the Resolute desk. Of that group, I think maybe Romney and Murkowski might eventually prove themselves deal-worthy. The rest, meh. Collins least of all.
Well said. I miss the "Like" button more than ever.
Poor Susan, full of anguished surprise that Trump didn't learn his lesson, also full of anguished surprise the Biden did learn his.
Today Susan Collins became Cornpop.
Concur with upthread comments. Collins was not acting in good faith, not least because she knows perfectly well that no other Republicans were acting in good faith either.
Why do people who understand basic empirical rationality -- beliefs formed, and subject to change, based on observations -- persist in saying they believe otherwise?
I mean, that's nice and all, and if Collins reads this, has an epiphany, and changes behavior then I will shut up and go away.
But who really thinks that is a sincere statement on Collins' part? Even if you assume she was acting in good faith in the 'negotiation' meeting, she cannot be under any illusions as to the rest of her pack.
She is having concerns is all. Tends to happen on days that end in 'y'.
Considering that she herself has been one of the Republicans confounding Dems over the years, with her charades of "concern" leading up to her GOP party line votes, I think she probably does understand.
She thinks the Biden-Harris regime is as dim as the Median Maine Voter.
She and her co-conspirators were probably thinking they could pull off another ACA grift, where the GOP talks and Dems make compromises but - surprise! - no Rethuglicans vote 'yea.' That might even earn them a featured slot at CPAC next year, but Joe isn't stupid. Or timid.
Lol, I think Joe, as Charlie Pierce puts it, looked in his big bag of fks and discovered he didn't have any more to give.
Susan Collins wondered "why they would the alienate the Republican most likely to work with them". It's interesting she didn't speak of alienating a group of ten Republicans. I guess she knew the idea of ten Republican senators being likely to work with the Biden White House was ridiculous.
But, by only talking about herself, Susan Collins isn't confronting the arithmetic here. Getting one Republican's support is only going to matter when that one Republican is more reliable in support of the Democrats' agenda than Joe Manchin is. Susan Collins has been nowhere near that.
Susan Collins's dye job or wig game is also more obvious than Neoliberal Nancy's, but you never hear the Jacobins & Chapistas & Cumtown Racists sing that song, doo dah, doo dah.
I think Collins is just jealous of Pelosi's considerable collection of fashion masks.
Possibly.
All the great fashion designers are Italian.
Republicans are the minority party. They don’t get to set the terms. President Biden had already set the terms; he said, convince me that you solve the problems the bill addresses for less spending, and I’ll agree to cuts. They didn’t do that, they just threw out a number that was clearly much too low to address the needs; in fact, they denied that some of the needs even existed. There was no intent to negotiate, it was all theater.
El Tio Pepe saw their eyeshade game for eight years as Barry Hussein's VP.
He's not going to play with them anymore.
Yes, he knew they weren’t going to come with a serious proposal.
Susan Collins has always seemed to me to be a typical Republican in terms of consistently conservative votes — she sometimes talks a good game but when it's time to vote, she falls in line and toes the mark. Some might call the contrast between her words and her votes bad faith, but in fact that is pretty much the story of the GOP. Ben Sasse is another who talks a good line but votes with the rest. Chuck Grassley used to be that way, but he's given up talking a good line.
It will be interesting to see if the GOP can sell the bipartisanship sob story after dynamiting every norm of bipartisanship that represented the least obstacle to their goals, loading the debris of those norms onto barges, towing the norm-debris laden barges outside the continental shelf, then torpedoing the barges.
My guess is that McConnell's lesson has been absorbed by Biden: no voter cares about legislative process. There is no price to be paid for abandoning the rules and no prize to be gained by ostentatiously following the rules.
Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper, Martha Raddatz, George Stephanopoulos, Chris Wallace, et. al., will do their damnedest to reanimate the Norms.
Now Kevin, are you just trolling us now???
😉
OT New York Times posts scores of videos (sorry, behind pay wall) showing eggregious NYPD overreactions to BLM protests.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/14/nyregion/nypd-george-floyd-protests.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
Rather than repeat what several people have already said better than I could, I'll repeat something I've been wondering for years and still have no answer to: why have Susan Collins and other centrist GOP senators never in the past 12 years formed a Blue Dog-like caucus with which they could 1) wield the balance of power in the Senate; 2) negotiate for pet projects and issues as the price of their votes; and 3) offer each other some protection from the wrath of party leaders?
As it is, centrist Republicans (e.g., Corker, Flake) who try to fight the party on a single issue get squashed. Others (e.g., Voinovich, Toomey) go quietly into retirement.
A related question: why has nobody in the DC press corps written an in-depth article about this "curious (12 year long) incident in the night"---is it control of party purse strings? fear of primary opponents? utter lack of political skill? something else?
Broadly, goes along with the presidential election axiom: Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.
The denizens of the Democrat Party just have the mien to be separate, be it the Yellow Dogs & Dixiecrats of yore, the Blue Dogs of the post-Watergate era, or the Squadratic Equation D/B/A Progressive Caucus.
Republicans have never really shown that interest to differentiate. (As I recall, Tim Scott refused even to meet with, let alone join the Congressional Black Caucus.)
My guess is that Collins knows that perfectly well. She just never leaves out an opportunity to show off her moderateness--especially an unsuitable opportunity. She did highlight all her "concerns" about Kavanaugh--then proceeded to vote to confirm him.
The 600 billion offer was an insult and intended as such. I would not be surprised to learn that McConnel instructed these senators to make the offer. She is either too stupid to see that or else too stupid to know that insulting the Dems is a bad way to be bipartisan.
She's smart enough to think Democrats are stupid enough to buy it.
But only the Village heralds at Meet the Press, Face the Nation, This Week, & FOXnews Sunday are that stupid.
What were they bringing to the table besides unneeded votes?
"They coulda been somebody"-- if they were even halfway serious and met Biden on his terms, as KenSchulz says upthread, they would have set themselves up as the 10 Rs whose votes he'd need under current rules *and could get* in order to advance his agenda. They could have been a real power bloc. Instead, as LBJ said in a different context, they pissed on his rug and only got a tsk-tsk moment out of it.
Romney is the one I don't understand in this group. He has no fear of trumpists and no need for party money and he's secure as long as he wants to hold the seat. Maybe he just completely misunderstood where Biden was at. Except for Murkowski, the rest, afaik, were generally party-line soldiers who might have had ideas about making a bid for glory but need party money and support too much to do anything serious. Biden undoubtedly saw that from the get-go as well. Which still leaves me scratching my head over Romney. Maybe he was trying to get back into the club after his conviction vote or something.
Anyway, if there was spine there, they coulda been somebody, and that would be my answer.
Giving $1.8T to the richest people in the solar system in 2017 was serious business and needed to be done.
Spending $1.8T to help out most Americans is giving way too much money to people who don't already have enough money, hence a moral hazard.
Once they offered up that lowball number, it was pretty clear that they weren't serious. Thus, the negotiations immediately moved forward with Manchin to get him on board and reach 50+1 votes.
I think she understands her party quite well; I think her actions are more performative than constructive.
If they were meant to be constructive, they wouldn't have lowballed Biden.
We are so far beyond being taken in by Susan Collins.
If she's in the room what do they think will happen?
Let me check my Zillow file.
Republicans looked bad. It was too low and they ended up looking like elitist wall street rentiers.
Got to admit: didn't foresee Shooter2422 reemerging as an anti-Zionist affinity troll.
Collins is a deeply unserious, gaslighting right winger. Her need to attract a decent amount of moderate support every six years keeps her from going full Josh Hawley in her votes and public pronouncements. But otherwise she's a dependable foot soldier in the project to weaken America and immiserate the non-rich (her Maine constituents very much included).
Nothing but disingenuousness comes out of her mouth.
Susan Cornpop is also a bearer of the coarse manners of a Yalie?
Why doesn't Susan just change her name to Lucy and be done with it. Democrats were totally right to sit down to negotiate, then right to walk away when Republicans make a joke offer. Let them prove their "good faith" with some support on bills their constituents are clamoring for.
https://www.cleveland.com/healthfit/2009/10/second_gop_senator_susan_colli_1.html
Whether it's an act or not, Collins' shtick is as the last-stand martyr of misunderstood Republican moderation, clutching her pearls as she is torn between Democratic and Republican extremism. She can't lose and she doesn't have to actually do anything or actually advocate any real substantive position or principle....just do her sensible, wounded, decent person-of-the-middle shtick.
She most certainly was not willing to negotiate around the edges of a $1.9T bill. She definitely seems to be confused about what was a reasonable negotiating position to take. She should have called (and probably did) Manchin and see what she could get him on board with. The problem was, she disagreed with him and didn't want to do a deal that he could sell. So he did a deal with the people who agreed with him more.
Why are we letting her lie about it?
There was negotiations. The Republicans wanted nothing. The Democrats wanted was what the vast majority of Americans wanted. What were they supposed to change?