Biden’s handlers and others (including his wife) have FINALLY got thru to the President that he isn’t a lawmakers in Congress anymore…
He isn’t the Vice President…
He IS the President of the United States of America…
It IS time for him to act like it….
This doesn’t mean he won’t talk to the GOPer’s…
It does mean he will have to stop being so deferential and more confronting….
“I never expected the ultra-MAGA Republicans who seem to control the Republican Party now to have been able to control the Republican Party,” the president said last week. “I never anticipated that happening.”
To many Democrats, the admission was long overdue. Even some in Biden’s orbit had been urging a far more aggressive response, according to four White House officials and Democrats close to the White House.
Steve Ricchetti, Biden’s senior adviser and the primary liaison with the GOP during the infrastructure talks, told Biden after that infrastructure bill passed that he didn’t think the GOP would bargain anymore. Much of the communications staff, including just-departed press secretary Jen Psaki, advised a more aggressive stance. And first lady Jill Biden told confidants that she was urging her husband to be less scripted and more on the offensive.
But that approach did not come quickly or naturally for Biden, who chose to largely hold back, even telling senior aides that, setting aside any personal feelings, he felt he could still work with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
As a candidate and since taking office, Biden would fondly recall working with Republicans and even arc-segregationist Democrats during his 36-year Senate career. And even though he witnessed firsthand the vicious GOP attacks on former President Barack Obama, he pointed to his role as vice president in successfully spearheading negotiations around tax cuts and spending reductions with McConnell as evidence that he possessed the right temperament and skills to make deals amid the histrionics.
But Biden also believed that after four tumultuous years of Trump, the nation was hungry for unity — and that even some Republicans, horrified by the Jan. 6 riot and weary of the 45th president’s divisive approach to the office, would be willing to spend some time working across the aisle….
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There was no single moment that prompted Biden to change course, the people close to him said. But as Republicans attacked his efforts to control surging inflation, the president chose to respond in kind. A feud with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) — whose tax plan was pounced upon by Democrats and largely ignored by fellow Republicans — quickly turned deeply personal, with Scott saying the president was “incoherent” and “incapacitated” and Biden responding that “I think the man has a problem.”
Gone was the Senate collegiality. In its place, Biden took to bemoaning the modern day GOP. “This ain’t your father’s Republican Party,” he has said repeatedly, adding that the GOP was “the MAGA party now.”…
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…privately, Biden has expressed frustration with media coverage of his administration and believes that the press — and Americans at large — have been too quick to gloss over the damage Trump did to the country. He also has taken to telling aides that he no longer recognizes the GOP, which he now views as an existential threat to the nation’s democracy….
image…The Texas Tribune