Current Events > Biden: The good news is Senate Republicans will be normal again if I win

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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/biden-impeachment-hasn-t-shaken-my-faith-working-republicans-n1128556

Former Vice President Joe Biden said the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump haven't "shaken my faith" with regards to working with Republicans, adding that "no one's" found that his son Hunter Biden did anything untoward in Ukraine.

Impeachment "hasn't shaken my faith in being able to work with at least" some Republicans, Biden told "TODAY" show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie in an exclusive interview ahead of Monday's Iowa caucuses.

"I think you're going to see the world change with [President Donald] Trump gone," Biden added.

The Senate last week voted against calling witnesses in Trump's impeachment trial, with just two Republicans voting in favor of additional testimony and documents. Some Republicans who voted against calling witnesses conceded that Trump acted improperly with regard to calling on Ukraine to announce investigations of the Bidens as he withheld nearly $400 million in aid.

The Senate is now expected to acquit Trump this week.

Meanwhile, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, told Bloomberg News Sunday that should Biden win the presidency, Republicans might "immediately" push to impeach him.

Biden has long insisted that he and his son did nothing wrong regarding Hunter's position on the board of a Ukrainian gas company which Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart to announce an investigation into.

On Monday, Biden said, "It's a good thing that no one's found anything wrong with his dealing with Ukraine except they say it sets a bad image."

Asked if it was "wrong" for his son to take the board seat "knowing that it was really because that company wanted access to you," the former vice president said, "that's not true."

"You're saying things you do not know what you're talking about," he said. "No one has said that who said that?"

For months, Trump and allies have alleged that the younger Biden's service on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, at a time when his father oversaw Ukraine policy in the Obama administration was corrupt. Most notably, they have advanced the unsubstantiated claim that as vice president the elder Biden took steps to protect his son from an investigation of the company.

But Bloomberg News, citing documents and a former Ukrainian official, reported that the Burisma investigation had been dormant for more than a year before Biden called for Viktor Shokin, Ukraine's top prosecutor at the time, to step down. PolitiFact, meanwhile, reported that it found no evidence to "support the idea that Joe Biden advocated with his son's interests in mind."

Shokin's ouster was backed by the international community as he was seen as ignoring corruption in the country.

Heading into Monday's caucuses, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., holds a four-point lead over Biden in the Hawkeye state, according to the RealClearPolitics average of several polls.

Biden said he sees his candidacy as "moving on from what we started" in former President Barack Obama's administration.

Just fundamentally unable to recognize what the Republican Party is about.
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care to clue us in on what the Republican party really is?

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This is the GOPs normal.

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Nothing wrong with the Republican senators, they're acting the same way they always have. If he said he could get the House Dems to return to normal, that might actually drive some people to vote for him.

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Republicans will never be normal

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Caution999 posted...

care to clue us in on what the Republican party really is?

A party that has been committed, since 2008 at least, to advancing its agenda and stopping the Democratic Party at all costs. It's a shame Joe Biden hasn't been in touch with anybody from the Obama administration who could tell him how their efforts at cooperation with the GOP went.
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Yes, they'll just go back to being obstructionist war hawks.

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Naw, I think he's right that there will be a normalization after Trump is out. It won't make them good or noncorrupt, but there will be a normalization. Right now the GOP are rallying behind Trump because they see the possibility of a political monopoly, given the timing and circumstance.

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Dunno how he could think this was a good thing to say when he was VP for Obama lmao
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There is no normal again lmao

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How do we get the Democratic Party back to normal?

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Antifar posted...

A party that has been committed, since 2008 at least, to advancing its agenda and stopping the Democratic Party at all costs. It's a shame Joe Biden hasn't been in touch with anybody from the Obama administration who could tell him how their efforts at cooperation with the GOP went.

Fair enough. There were a lot of salty Republicans who obstructed everything because they just hated Obama.

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Caution999 posted...

care to clue us in on what the Republican party really is?

a functioning extension of the wealthiest special interests who use fake masculinity as a way to appeal to the uneducated, and who rely on the demographics of senate elections, the electoral college, and state+federal level gerrymandering to operate as a majority despite being a clear minority

the embrace of rapists, murderers, and kkk members just seems like part of the fake masculinity to me

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KillerSlaw posted...

How do we get the Democratic Party back to normal?

Stop letting candidates like Bernie Sanders hijack it

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To Republicans and Independents a normal Democrat is conservative in money related ventures while liberal in social ventures to Democrats a normal Republican is conservative in money and social ventures.

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shockthemonkey posted...

Before Trump ran, they were already blocking absolutely everything they could from the Obama administration. Why would they suddenly act differently if Joe Biden got elected?

I'm not saying they will. I'm saying that the policy and politics that the GOP are willing to endorse between 2008 and now has changed. I have no doubt that they will try to obstruct every action of any sitting democrat.

Let's not pretend like there wasn't a dramatic shift in sentiment toward Trump and his campaign the moment he won the primary nom.

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Garioshi posted...

Yes, they'll just go back to being obstructionist war hawks.

Biden:

https://youtu.be/q3svW8PM_jc

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Biden: Things will go back to normal once I'm elected.
Republicans: We'll impeach Biden on Day 1.
Biden: Yep, totally normal.
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shockthemonkey posted...

Ok so you think Republicans arent going to work with a Democratic president... then what are you agreeing with Biden about? Theyll use less bad words or something?

Idk, there's currently a completely corrupt senate trial going on that is outside the realm of any normal politics in the history of the US.

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Caution999 posted...

care to clue us in on what the Republican party really is?

The same garbage that keeps you getting in trouble here.

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Caution999 posted...

care to clue us in on what the Republican party really is?

evil

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DifferentialEquation posted...

Nothing wrong with the Republican senators, they're acting the same way they always have. If he said he could get the House Dems to return to normal, that might actually drive some people to vote for him.

And that's the problem the republicans are acting the same as always and its destroying America. Screw over the people for the interest of the rich and evangelical Christian elite.

The democrats have their problems but the people are starting to wise up that they are the lesser evil.

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Sackgurl posted...

a functioning extension of the wealthiest special interests who use fake masculinity as a way to appeal to the uneducated, and who rely on the demographics of senate elections, the electoral college, and state+federal level gerrymandering to operate as a majority despite being a clear minority

but how does this explain all of the really popular GOP governors of states in the northeast?

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The thing about Biden is that it's hard to know what he really is bringing to the table.

Is he an Obama-era and earlier throwback attempting to create a message of normalcy and sanity or is he just an old fogey that's completely out of touch?

I honestly find it near impossible that a guy that was front and center to eight years of obstructionism by the modern national GOP could be so clueless as to expect a mere single electoral victory by the Dems would snap the Republicans out of it, and personally think that his entire narrative is trying to appeal to the middle by making it sound like relatively functional government is still possible. After all, his appeal has essentially been that he's a mostly known quantity and isn't proposing anything too radical. The dude was a ridiculously accomplished Senator and a foreign policy specialist despite the gaffes that always get brought up, so it's not like he was a dullard to begin with.

But his continued toeing the line on bipartisan talk and how the GOP will moderate post-Trump makes me question that benefit of the doubt that I've given him. I'm a Republican sick to death of the national Republican Party, and I have zero expectations the party will return to even the Gingrich era of handling things for the foreseeable future.

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shockthemonkey posted...

Before Trump ran, they were already blocking absolutely everything they could from the Obama administration. Why would they suddenly act differently if Joe Biden got elected?

It's really not all that different than past presidencies. I know the popular perspective is congress kept Obama from doing anything, but in terms of actual bills passed it's not nearly as low as you might think:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/12/13/president-obama-fewer-bill-signing-ceremonies-gridlock/95352806/

Obama has had 60 bill-signing ceremonies during his presidency, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data from the American Presidency Project. That's significantly fewer than fellow two-term presidents George W. Bush (95) and Bill Clinton (91). President Ronald Reagan whose party never controlled Congress in eight years signed 61.

So Obama ceremonially signed about as many bills as Reagan, but fewer than Bush and Clinton who had friendlier relations with congress. It's also worth noting that not every bill get a signing ceremony. More ceremonies tends to mean more high profile "victories" but it isn't itself even a direct indicator of what got done. For example, during Obama's presidency closer to 300 bills were passed per congress (on average):
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics
110th congress - 460 new laws
111th congress - 385 new laws
112th congress - 284 new laws
113th congress - 296 new laws
114th congress - 329 new laws

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shockthemonkey posted...

Which is consistent with how Republicans acted during Bidens time as VP

Naw, i don't even think you believe that.

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I mean, the GOP senate will be 'normalized' when they're powerless

it's not specifically a GOP thing, though, Sanders wants to blow up institutional norms even further. the ultimate effect of that could be to make the next president even harder to curtail in their awfulness but that's the hand the democrats have been dealt.

Joe BIden is basically proposing that electing him will stop the erosion of institutional norms but they were already eroded by the end of the last presidency, otherwise it wouldn't have been so easy to get rid of them immediately in the new one. But even if that weren't true, it's hard to see that as a compelling strategy. You know what they call it when the other side can do whatever they want and you hamstring your own side without getting anything out of it? I'm pretty sure that's called losing.

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s0nicfan posted...

It's really not all that different than past presidencies. I know the popular perspective is congress kept Obama from doing anything, but in terms of actual bills passed it's not nearly as low as you might think:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/12/13/president-obama-fewer-bill-signing-ceremonies-gridlock/95352806/

I mean, imo it's the wrong framing for the comparison because Obama was specifically trying to be a bipartisan president and Reagan specifically wasn't lol

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Balrog0 posted...

I mean, imo it's the wrong framing for the comparison because Obama was specifically trying to be a bipartisan president and Reagan specifically wasn't lol

My point stands, though, Total number of bills pushed to Obama each congress isn't that much lower than the average, and him having fewer ceremonial signings (although he still had 60) doesn't mean nothing hit his desk. If you wanted to complain about something, you could complain that Obama sponsored something like 140 bills and only 2 made it to his desk, but the popular meme about congress completely stonewalling Obama by not passing anything is just objectively untrue.

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s0nicfan posted...

My point stands, though, Total number of bills pushed to Obama each congress isn't that much lower than the average, and him having fewer ceremonial signings (although he still had 60) doesn't mean nothing hit his desk. If you wanted to complain about something, you could complain that Obama sponsored something like 140 bills and only 2 made it to his desk, but the popular meme about congress completely stonewalling Obama by not passing anything is just objectively untrue.

I'm not really sure what you're talking about with this post. Like I said, the comparison is wrong because Reagan pushed policies that were transformatively conservative and that the Democratic party at-large would be opposed to and still managed to pass as much as Obama, who openly attempted to put together compromise plans for years to get GOP buy-in and failed to do so. It's not just a bean-counting game or whatever

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to be clear, I don't even blame either president for that, if anything it's Obama's fault for being a shit leader while Reagan actually managed to get his party to support his more radical agenda

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Balrog0 posted...

I'm not really sure what you're talking about with this post. Like I said, the comparison is wrong because Reagan pushed policies that were transformatively conservative and that the Democratic party at-large would be opposed to and still managed to pass as much as Obama, who openly attempted to put together compromise plans for years to get GOP buy-in and failed to do so. It's not just a bean-counting game or whatever

Presumably you didn't see the entire second half of my post where I go on to say that signing ceremonies are only a small part of the picture and then linked to govtrack statistics on total bills passed? Like... if the argument was "Obama didn't get as many bills passed that fit his personal agenda" then sure, I agree. I was specifically debunking the "Congress kept obama from getting anything done by not passing bills" meme.

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we cant lump in the 2009-2010 congress with the others and average across them

we should be comparing each individually

and probably removing any that are just post offices being renamed, or spending authorization for entire depts

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Joe Biden is a Senate Republican

s0nicfan posted...

Presumably you didn't see the entire second half of my post where I go on to say that signing ceremonies are only a small part of the picture and then linked to govtrack statistics on total bills passed? Like... if the argument was "Obama didn't get as many bills passed that fit his personal agenda" then sure, I agree. I was specifically debunking the "Congress kept obama from getting anything done by not passing bills" meme.

I just don't see the need to be pedantic here. At least from my perspective most people who talk about legislation like that aren't talking about every single thing that might need a law. Like there's this topic on the front page asking whether Sander's biggest accomplishment is naming one building or naming another. To the extent people even recognize that requires legislation, that's not what they mean when they say a president couldn't pass anything. So bringing up the total number that includes things like that doesn't seem to help illuminate anything imo

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Imagine being Biden and thinking you might be President.

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Balrog0 posted...

I just don't see the need to be pedantic here. At least from my perspective most people who talk about legislation like that aren't talking about every single thing that might need a law. Like there's this topic on the front page asking whether Sander's biggest accomplishment is naming one building or naming another. To the extent people even recognize that requires legislation, that's not what they mean when they say a president couldn't pass anything. So bringing up the total number that includes things like that doesn't seem to help illuminate anything imo

I think the distinction matters because the president has total flexibility on what does and doesn't get a ceremonial signing. So if the president wanted to, they could just have fewer of those and then claim they were being obstructed even if they weren't. Or hold extra and then say they got more done than anyone else.

Plus it's not like signature legislation has an even distribution. If Obama got most of what he promised to do done in his first two years when he had a more supportive Congress, then having fewer signing ceremonies in out years may also mean he had fewer big things left.

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