Reacting to reports that GOP leadership is mulling stripping committee seats from the 13 House members who voted for the Democrats’ $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, President Joe Biden says he hopes “that we can get back to a place where there’s more civility in politics. I really mean it. And I’ve never seen it this way.” This concern-trolling, incidentally, came during a conversation with DNC chair Jaime Harrison, who only last week said that Republicans were a party of “fascism and fear” for opposing critical race theory in Virginia — so you can tell he really means it.
This is the president, of course, who believes that chasing moderate legislators into bathrooms to pressure them to support a progressive agenda is just “part of the process.” I suppose Sinema should be happy that Biden hasn’t accused her of “betting against America” or wanting to put black Americans “back in chains” for failing to sign up for the entire progressive agenda. But one of the biggest myths about this president, no matter what Trump did or didn’t do, is that he has the resume or temperament to bring America back to some bygone age of civility. Biden has been a crass, cynical, and nasty partisan for his entire career.