Thread by @RachelBitecofer

1. Biden is clearly being sincere in his outreach effort to Republicans, and this is no lukewarm effort- its a full court press. And I am not acting on any insider knowledge, but my assumption is that he's been pushing for a one-on-one w McConnell- hoping that he can convince him

2. hit the reset button, that the two of them, by the virtue of their positions, DO hold determinative power to force a change in tone & behavior. That if both of them committed to it, and then brought McCarthy & Pelosi & Schumer along, they COULD impose design institutional

3. management systems that redirect member behavior towards normality, towards the old way of doing business. A lot of behavior is structured by the rules, reward, and sanction systems set up by party leadership- there are a lot of carrots and sticks that could be used to reign

4. in member behavior, and of course, the rules & adherence by which McConnell runs the Senate are going to condition everything. Certainty, Biden can lay out a persuasive case as to why doing this is CRITICAL. America remains in a code red democratic crisis. Until and unless,

5. most of the Republican Party embraces the reality that Biden won, that the election was perfectly legit, and that Trump lost fair and square, we will remain in code red. BC the fact is, from here we are only moving into more fragility. Keep in mind, the allegations of fraud

6. here- they are completely made up, out of thin air, strategically, on purpose- with the goal of stealing the election. By the country's current president & almost universally supported (at least by silent acquiesce) by the majority of the GOP.

In the United States of America

7. That's not good guys! But in terms of Biden, he is fully invested in the Neustadt model of the presidency- the power to persuade. His actions thus far have all been to maximize his appeal to McConnell, and to preemptively neutralize reasons McConnell might contrive to torpedo

8. cooperation/bipartisanship. Will it work? I think the fact that Biden hasn't sat down with McConnell yet, and that no meeting has been announced given the importance of COVID relief, suggests McConnell is playing hard to get on that meeting. Luckily, I watched this int

9. w @KBeds bc the print write-up doesn't covey the vibe you got from her response that their outreach had gone unrequited thus far. On McConnell's part, as much as I want him to be inclined to put an end to this craziness, I'm more than skeptical that MM even WANTS to. Biden's

10. effort hinges on the assumption that McConnell agrees that making 40% of the American public believe wrongly that the election was fraudulent- thus setting the party up for a series of crazy primaries in '22 and '24 is a bad thing if for no other reason than the potential

11. electoral backlash but if I'm McConnell, maybe I'm no longer concerned about electoral backlash. Maybe I'm becoming comfortable w the notion that actually, I can do damn near anything I want, say damn near anything I want, and still win competitive election bc the opposition

12. party is inept at electoral politics and utterly fails to weaponize any of my excesses effectively against me. I mean, look at the GOP record for 2018-2020- acquittal of a prez that impeachment hearings exposed as an incontrovertibly guilty man, refusal to pass economic aid

13. for the ENTIRITY of the fall general election and instead of getting electorally crushed- he comes out on top?! (Though McConnell might care to know that I suspect Dems not doing field to be a major contributor to this). Still, there is basically no democratic accountability

14. left from the public. Hyperpartisanship, esp on the Rep side, gives you a free check to do anything, literally ANYTHING, and still earn 90% of the R vote (Again, Biden's win is the product of surge turnout and coalescing of the Dem's coalition + pure Is

15. also swung to Biden after going Obama-->Trump-->Biden, as my theory predicted). If you're McConnell, you don't want to sit down with Biden, bc yhttps://www.wsj.com/articles/how-joe-biden-won-the-election-votes-from-blue-america-with-few-gains-in-trump-world-11604862528

16. everything Biden says about the destabilization of democracy- about the logical end game of continued party fighting, esp to the ridiculous levels that the GOP has now taken things- telling their electorate that the presidential election was fraudulent and thus, undermining

American democracy. So if you have no intention of playing ball, I assume you'd want to skip the lecture. So what I'm wondering is what Biden will do in response to McConnell once it becomes obvious that McConnell is not going to put the brakes on polarization/hyperpartisanship.