Lately I have resisted commenting on stuff, but your posts are more constructive so I will give it a whirl.
I believe that Biden would really prefer the more collegial Senate that he left in 2009. I don't know about Pelosi or Pence. But I can say that I think this is mostly an incorrect reading of McConnell. McConnell doesn't care about the perceived hypocrisy of the positions he takes. He doesn't care about collegiality. He is not an institutionalist. He cares about accumulating power and using it to achieve his goals, which are generally unpopular. He is a high stakes gambler, a position readily afforded to him due to the heavy Republican bias of the Senate. If McConnell favored more popular policies and a more moderate approach, Democrats would rarely control the chamber. Instead he takes more unpopular positions that lose him some Senate races in reddish-purple states in Dem leaning years, but in return he attempts to achieve more ambitious goals than he otherwise would be able to. McConnell appears to regard bipartisan compromise as an illogical endeavor of a bygone era. It also appears that a lot of Democrats, even moderates, in the Senate are figuring out this is how McConnell will always operate and are adjusting their strategy accordingly.
Here is a deep dive into McConnell that was published this spring by Jane Mayer (
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-mitch-mcconnell-became-trumps-enabler-in-chief). It is a fascinating article, and I think the most memorable quote for me was when Mayer writes "For months, I searched for the larger principles or sense of purpose that animates McConnell. I travelled twice to Kentucky, observed him at a Trump rally in Lexington, and watched him preside over the impeachment trial in Washington. I interviewed dozens of people, some of whom love him and some of whom despise him. I read his autobiography, his speeches, and what others have written about him. Finally, someone who knows him very well told me, 'Give up. You can look and look for something more in him, but it isn’t there. I wish I could tell you that there is some secret thing that he really believes in, but he doesn’t.'"
Another relevant article is a recent piece written by Ezra Klein focused on the downstream effects of McConnell's approach (
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...gress-democrats-2020-supreme-court-filibuster). Klein writes "Despite his theatrical embrace of sobriquets like “Darth Vader” and “the Grim Reaper,” McConnell isn’t an evil genius. He is a vessel for the currents and forces of his time. What sets him apart is his fulsome embrace of those forces, his willingness to
cut through the cant and pretense of American politics, to stand athwart polarization yelling, "
Faster!”
And here is a statistical analysis from Nate Silver at 538 showing the high rural bias of the Senate (
https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...-hard-for-democrats-to-win-the-supreme-court/). Since politics is highly polarized right now along rural and urban lines, this is a source of strength for McConnell that allows him to pursue more aggressive strategies than when the Democrats control the Senate.
I do think it is accurate to say that McConnell is a disruptive force who will have forever changed how politics are conducted in this country long after he leaves the Senate. Whether what McConnell is accomplishing is good or bad is a value judgement in the eye of the beholder, and people will have to decide for themselves how they feel about this when they go to vote.
articlesofunity.org
