On Wednesday, President Joe Biden had a question for the 30 reporters who had gathered for the second press conference of his administration.
“Did any of you think that we’d get to a point where not a single Republican would diverge on a major issue? Not one?” he asked.
Biden’s question was rhetorical. But the answer from the gathered reporters was not difficult to imagine. They, like Biden, had watched the GOP mount a wall of opposition to President Barack Obama’s agenda over his two terms in office. They had heard Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promise, well before Biden was ever elected, to be the “grim reaper” for Democratic policy goals.
When Biden came into office a year ago this week, he made it clear he was going to rely on Congress to enact his agenda — he did not want to use extensive executive actions; he wanted to work with the GOP. Biden had predicted over and over again during his campaign that Republicans would experience an “epiphany” once Donald Trump was out of the White House. When he wasn’t predicting divine interventions, he was reminiscing about the senators who taught him Washington’s ropes in the 1970s.
Biden has an utterly unique relationship with Congress: His fellow senators helped build him back up during his first term, after the death of his wife and infant daughter in a car crash. It’s not surprising he’s reluctant to broadly condemn the institution where he spent virtually his entire professional life.
But Biden’s ongoing belief in Congress’ better nature is deeply out of sync with the public’s and is leading his administration astray, contributing to both Biden’s low approval rating and the legislative muck dragging down his agenda. Just 23% of voters approve of the job Congress is doing, according to the most recent Gallup survey on the topic. For years, roughly two-thirds of Americans have suggested most members of Congress don’t deserve reelection. A majority of Americans think the typical member of Congress is corrupt, according to some polling.
Where Biden sees (or at least saw) a group of honorable men and women working to craft the nation’s public policy, the public largely sees a group of squabbling ne’er-do-wells, funded by the wealthy and interest groups and protected from accountability by gerrymandered districts.
The consequences of Biden’s worldview were clear this week, as he tried and failed to sell the Democratic Party’s sweeping voting rights package. In a speech in Atlanta last week, Biden framed the debate as a repeat of the Senate’s 20th-century high point: the passage of the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act in the 1960s, when both parties teamed up to provide new levels of freedom for African Americans.
“Restore the bipartisan tradition of voting rights,” Biden pleaded with Republicans, trying to turn back the political clock to the 40-year stretch where the issue was nonpartisan, before Supreme Court decisions gutted the law. “Restore the institution of the Senate the way it was designed to be.”
The comparison proved unpersuasive, to say the least. While it’s clear GOP legislatures are working to limit opportunities for Black people to vote, Biden’s invocation of Bull Connor gave Republicans an opening to preen and bristle at a comparison to a violent segregationist. They also gave the GOP an easy way to downplay the problem: The obscure ways they are working to limit Black voting power — capping the number of drop boxes in urban areas, making early voting optional on Sundays — are not direct equivalents to Jim Crow.
