Monday, April 19, 2021

Bipartisanship

I don't think any of the reasons given for why bipartisanship is good have much validity. Maybe the best justification on its face was the Obama-with-ACA one. Basically, if you're going to do something really big you want some general buy-in so that it's less likely to be undone (Obama also just wanted to prove he was a Uniter).

Still that was dumb and wrong because, as as have seen, in our system it's as hard to undo big legislation as it is to do it. Hard doesn't mean impossible, but nor should it. Republicans never managed to undo ACA. The couple of whacks they took at it were probably good, actually, and the rest was on John Roberts.

Our electoral system should be a competition. Choosing between basic party platforms is better than asking voters to vote for the person based on personality, or whatever, at least for Congress. Pundits think voters are dumb for expecting politicians to implement those platforms, but those pundits show their contempt for reasonable democracy. In 2016, very savvy pundits loved to show how savvy they were by claiming that Clinton was full of shit about many of her campaign promises, and that her being full of shit was good! Whether she was full of shit or not, it was a pretty weird argument to be making! She's lying, and it's good! They would say this out loud where people could hear them!

No one can explain just what Joe the Biden or Democrats generally would win by getting Republicans on board for an infrastructure bill, or anything else. There's no need to see an unncessary Republican vote (if it's unnecessary) as something to be traded for.