Brunch Liberalism on collision course with the real existing Republican Party

The current moment and the early weeks of the Biden-Harris Administration are particular important. Not only because of the immediately urgent problems of the COVID pandemic, the economic depression, and repairing various instances of administrative dysfunction caused by the Trump-Pence Administration. But also because the Republicans are already testing the incoming Administration to see how effectively the Republicans can block them. If the Biden-Harris team responds to Republican bad faith in negotiation by pretending that it is not bad faith, that will further embolden their obstructionism.

The current fight over a new COVID-relief/stimulus bill is the first round. If the Republicans come out of this thinking they've punked the Democrats - which is where it's headed at this particular moment - they will take that as encouragement for what they intend to do anyway, to undermine the Biden-Harris Administration as much or more than they did with the Obama-Biden Administration.

Among the Democratic base, the Brunch Liberals will be ready to declare Normalcy on January 20. Eugene Robinson is already impatient to go back to brunch: Can you feel your blood pressure going down? Thank Joe Biden. Washington Post 12/17/2020. He gushes in his first paragraph. "You know what's truly remarkable and promising about the incoming Biden-Harris administration? It's so normal."

In case we might misunderstand the point, he continues directly: "Soothingly normal. Reassuringly normal. Lowering-everybody's-blood-pressure normal. And after Inauguration Day, we have reason to hope, even boringly normal for days or weeks at a time."

For weapons manufacturers and other corporate lobbyists, "normalcy" never went away. And business as usual will continue, though there will be more lobbying opportunities for former Democratic politicians and operatives. (Not that they were exactly scare anyway!) They will continue doing business as usual.

For devoted Trump fans, which apparently includes a very large part of the Republican Party at all levels, the Trump-Pence years were Normalcy, i.e., freaking out over imaginary QAnon conspiracies run by a mythical Deep State and imagining that scary black people and Latino immigrants were going to confiscate their cars and lawnmowers and shotguns, or whatever. They are already shifting from treating the Biden-Harris Administration as an ongoing crisis and will be howling endlessly about tan suits and Democratic politicians saying cuss words and an endless search for scandals and pseudoscandals of all time.

Then, of course, there are the Proud Boys and similar violence-oriented radical right groups who are already looking forward to "civil war". Their only "normalcy" is looking to promote violence and racial hatred and general sedition against democracy, but their activity and adrenaline levels are already notably increasing. (See Dave Neiwert's latest, Proud Boys torch their claims to nonviolence with hate crime attacks on Black churches in D.C. Daily Kos 12/17/2020):

One of the recurrent myths that far-right street brawlers such as the Proud Boys like to tell each other, in bullhorn speeches and social media posts, is that what differentiates them from “rioters” like antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) is that they don’t engage in arson and property damage: “That’s not who we are!” is a common refrain heard at right-wing events, including the recent pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” protests.

But it is, in fact, who they are, and worse. The Proud Boys who invaded Washington, D.C., last Saturday to protest Joe Biden’s election made that more than clear when they began attacking and vandalizing African American churches with Black Lives Matter signs and banners, tearing them down and burning them in the streets. Metro D.C. police are now investigating the acts as hate crimes. [my emphasis]

No, the radical right isn't taking the onset of Biden-Harris Normalcy as permission to Go To Brunch in piece peace. Proud Boys vandalize D.C. African American churches, destroy BLM signs Daily Kos 12/17/2020 (language may be inappropriate for workplaces):