Thread by @tzimmer_history

As is often the case with Biden (and many Democratic officials), we can only hope that he understands the “get along” stuff to be utter nonsense but considers it useful rhetoric / good politics - as opposed to actually still believing in the chimera of “bipartisanship”.

https://twitter.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1483920349595148295

Unfortunately, as @perrybaconjr outlines in this great piece, the evidence suggests that what is on display here is not just politics and tactics, but a manifestation of deeply held ideological views that keep distorting the perspective on a blatantly anti-democratic GOP.

https://twitter.com/perrybaconjr/status/1484539441947500544

How can we explain that some establishment Democrats still insist a return to “normalcy” is imminent (any minute now!), when Republicans could not be clearer about the fact that they consider Democratic governance fundamentally illegitimate?

One factor certainly is that many of these Democratic leaders are old – which means they came up in a very different political environment, when there was indeed a great deal of bipartisan cooperation in Congress. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing, but it was a thing.

People like Dianne Feinstein and Joe Biden himself are struggling to adapt to a post-Obama reality in which they are, by virtue of being Democratic politicians, considered members of an “Un-American,” radically leftist, and fundamentally illegitimate faction by most Republicans.

https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1316813051543392256

The ideological roots of this inability to adapt and grapple in earnest with the overwhelming amount of empirical evidence that a return to “normalcy” and bipartisanship is, in fact, not imminent, run a lot deeper than that, however.

The way many establishment Democrats act makes a lot more sense if we assume they feel a kinship with Republican/conservative elites, and that clouds their perspective of who these reactionaries really are. “How bad could it possibly be – I know these people, they are like me!”

It is precisely because they, as predominantly white, predominantly male elites aren’t affected in the same way as people who happen to be *not* white men that their perspective on the threat of a white nationalist reactionary regime is different.

There is a certain type of reactionary centrism at work here: a perspective in which the excesses of militant Trumpism are excluded from the “respectable” spectrum of American politics – but so are all the “radical Leftists” like Bernie Sanders, and all those “woke” activists.

https://twitter.com/cbsnews/status/1483929051630907392

The constant attempts to normalize a radicalizing Republican Party and the reluctance to treat it as the acute threat to democracy it clearly is also have a lot to do with two foundational myths that shape the collective imaginary: American exceptionalism and white innocence.

Many Democratic leaders still cling to some version of the exceptionalist idea that “It cannot happen here”: America is seen as fundamentally good, the institutions as essentially healthy – acknowledging what the GOP has become goes against the pillars of that worldview.

And the American political discourse is still largely shaped by the paradigm of white innocence: economic anxiety, anti-elite backlash, or just liberals being mean – whatever animates white people’s extremism, it must not be racism, and they cannot be blamed for their actions.

The idea of white innocence not only clouds the perspective on the Trumpian base, but also on Republican elites: Since they cannot possibly be animated by reactionary white nationalism, they must be scared by the dangerous demagogue, or maybe seduced and temporarily delusional.

“I actually like Mitch McConnell,” Biden says, and he’s not only expressing personal feelings, but providing a window into who and what he sees when he looks at Republican politicians: No matter what they do, underneath they’re good guys, they’ll snap out of it, I promise!

https://twitter.com/jasonscampbell/status/1483920349595148295

Unfortunately, this isn’t a possibly naive, but admirable case of trying to see the good in other people. It’s the manifestation of a specific worldview that makes it nearly impossible to acknowledge the depths of GOP radicalization and the true nature of the political conflict.