It's within the context of his main campaign framing of I'm Not Donald Trump rather than on building a mandate for Democratic positions. Thanks largely to the coronavirus and the economic depression it kicked off, that strategy is working well so far. Also, because of Trump's continuing personal disintegration.
Scott Destrow reports for NPR (In Election's Final Weeks, Biden Makes A Case For Unity Amid A Tumultuous Time 10/06/2020):
Speaking Tuesday afternoon overlooking the battlefield where Union soldiers tilted the tide of the Civil War in Gettysburg, Pa., the Democratic nominee tried to frame his call for unity within the arc of American history.The Gettsburg Address is not the House Divided speech. But let's not quibble. You know, Lincoln the Greatest President, honoring fallen soldiers, bringing the country together. For an establishment Democratic politician, it's a good use of historical symbolism. Of course, he was relying on the historical symbolism of a Republican politician, so I guess we can't have everything ...
"Today, once again, we are a house divided," Biden said, echoing the words of President Abraham Lincoln. "But that, my friends, can no longer be."
I would love to see Status Quo Joe roll out this Lincoln quote from 1861:
It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. ...He won't do it, of course. But it would be cool if he did.
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. ... A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them.
Lincoln himself declared that his two main Presidential models were Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, the two major founders of the Democratic Party, both of whom today's Democratic politicians were prefer not to invoke theses days. Times change. Historical narratives evolve.
(I'll use this opportunity to make another plug for Heather Cox Richardson's lecture series on The American Paradox, which takes a sophisticated and sensibly nuanced to the development of democracy in the US. I don't know if she thinks of herself as a Hegelian in some way, but she does take the unfolding of contradictions in history seriously.)
I instantly broke out in hives when he said "bipartisan". But he did make a point of unequivocally condemning Trump's "very fine people" at the murderous neonazi marches in Charlottesville in 2017 and going after the Republican Party's current overt support for violent white supremacist goon squads. Even Joe can be "antifa" when he puts his mind to it.
Bipartisanship is only a good thing if it involves getting something constructive accomplished. If it means another Democratic Administration giving a free pass to people in government who broke the law in serious ways in the previous Republican administration, it's destructive. Trump is out there listing political opponents he wants arrested and prosecuted. We just can't afford to have a situation where Republicans are willing to pursue blatantly partisan prosecutions and the Democrats refuse to allow the Justice Department to impartially and independently enforce the law against crimes committed by Republicans. The Republicans will give their "bipartisan" endorsement to that arrangement. But it's not the rule of law.
Lindsey "we-got-thuh-votes-tuh-do-at-so-we-gone-do-at" Graham's position on the Barrett nomination is the Republicans' current position on bipartisanship. If the Democrats keep the House majority and win 50 Senate seats with VP Kamala Harris as the deciding vote - and given the current poll numbers that's a modest expectation - that means the Democrats have the votes to enact everything in their party program. Period. Joe Biden was in the Senate longer than Lyndon Johnson was before he became President. He knows how to twist arms to get key votes in line. If he wants to get a couple of Republican Senators to vote his way so a conservative clown like Joe Manchin can vote with the Republicans, well, in that case, hooray for bipartisanship!
I take it for granted that the Democrats will end the anti-democratic Senate filibuster rule. *Not* ending it would basically be a bipartisan surrender to the Republicans on issues across the board right out of the gate. I don't even want to think about what a disaster that would be.
Starting the night of Biden's Gettysburg speech, the Grand Wizard of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, had some partisan ideas (Kyle Cheney, ‘Where are all of the arrests?’: Trump demands Barr lock up his foes Politico 10/07/2020):
Donald Trump mounted an overnight Twitter blitz demanding to jail his political enemies and call out allies he says are failing to arrest his rivals swiftly enough.Now, the FBI arrested several members of a far-right terrorist group for "a plot to violently overthrow the government and kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer." And maybe murder her. The President responded by ... attacking Gov. Whitmer. Bunker Boy may be garbled in a lot of his statements. But his position on this is very clear. Here's a report from a Michigan FOX News station, President Trump tweets about Gov. Whitmer, Joe Biden responds with tweet Mid-Michigan NOW Newsroom 10/09/2020.
Trump twice amplified supporters’ criticisms of Attorney General William Barr, including one featuring a meme calling on him to “arrest somebody!” He wondered aloud why his rivals, like President Barack Obama, Democratic nominee Joe Biden and former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton hadn’t been imprisoned for launching a “coup” against his administration.
“Where are all of the arrests?” Trump said, after several dozen tweets on the subject over the past 24 hours. “Can you imagine if the roles were reversed? Long term sentences would have started two years ago. Shameful!”
By early afternoon, Trump was letting loose his frustrations in an all-caps missive that seemed aimed at nobody in particular.
“DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, THE BIGGEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!! BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN - GOT CAUGHT!!!” Trump tweeted.
See also, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer slams Trump in response to kidnapping plot Guardian News 10/08/2020:
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