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Let me explain more fully why Biden is fundamentally wrong here. He is wrong because what he envisions is compromise, and while that sounds nice, the modern Republican Party is devoted to the premise that compromise is surrender and maybe even treasonous. (1)
Trump is the culmination & embodiment of that premise, but he is not its source. The GOP's absolute rejection of compromise dates back three decades at least, back to the early days of Gingrich, and over that time it has become the feature by which the party defines itself. (2)
If you want to know why our government is broken, this is why. The Constitution was designed by the Founders as a machine that produces compromise, that forces compromise. In a two-party system in which one party rejects compromise as an option, that machine can't function. (3)
Republicans who are willing to compromise get labeled as RINOs and are driven out of the party. Say "buh-bye" to Bob Corker; say "Sayonara" to Jeff Flake. Remember John Boehner, who did not dare even utter the word "compromise?" He got run off anyway. (4)
Calling that attitude unconstitutional is too passive a term -- it is actively anti-constitutional. Because once you reject compromise as an option, then you have only one means left to attain your goals, and that is the utter destruction and domination of your opposition. (5)
There can be no "win/win" outcome in such a system. There must only be win/lose, to the point that making the other side lose becomes the whole goal. Again, Trump did not create that mentality, but he embodies it fully which is why he is so loved. (6)
Under such an approach, the rules and norms that evolved over centuries to make compromise possible and necessary become obstacles to domination that must be gutted, and the side that understands that best gains a quick march on its opposition. (7)
Respect for checks and balances also goes out the window, and for good reason. Checks and balances were explicitly written into the system to frustrate any who might seek domination, so domination requires that those provisions be neutralized, ignored or bulldozed altogether (8)
I share Biden's ultimate goal - we absolutely do need to restore a politics of compromise, because the alternative is exceedlngly grim. Some on the right already speak of civil war, and they do so not as a nightmare but with romantic relish, as the ultimate win/lose. (9)
But compromise requires that you have a willing partner, and all of the pressures and incentives within the modern Republican Party, with its talk-radio and Fox News enforcers, are designed to make such a partnership impossible. (10)
The only way to change that mindset is to change those incentives, and the only way to change those incentives is to demonstrate convincingly at the ballot box that in a win-lose world, it is the GOP that loses. It's the only way to break the fever. (11)
The GOP knows that day is coming, which is why they grasp so desperately at voter suppression and gerrymandering, and why they have set aside morality and rationality in embracing the likes of Trump as their savior. He is a sign of their fear, not of their confidence. (12)
All demographic & policy trends -- all of them -- spell deep trouble for the GOP. A 19th century ideology and a 20th century voting base just isn't a formula for success in 2020 and beyond. It's ironic, but In a win/lose, no-compromise world, they have the most to lose. (13)
But I can't tell them that. Joe Biden can't tell them that. The only way to break through the bubble and restore a politics of compromise is to demonstrate to GOP voters that the alternative to compromise isn't the victory that they've been promised, but defeat. (14)
