从他第三次竞选总统开始，乔·拜登认为他处于一个独特的位置来修补一个分裂的国家，并努力——即使是与共和党——以某种共识的形式“统一国家”。
民主党总统候选人竞选的核心论点正受到最高法院未来之战的严峻考验。
在自由派大法官鲁斯·巴德·金斯伯格去世后的一周里，他面临着进步人士寻求更大胆行动的压力。拜登在参议院度过了36年的职业生涯，参议院的大多数共和党人都忽略了他的呼吁，即等到选举结束后再批准继任者。唐纳德·特朗普总统预计将于周六任命他的人选，启动一个可能只会加深该国宗派政治的确认过程。
目前，拜登坚持自己的立场，捍卫机构和治理程序的目的和功能，这些都是建立金斯伯格继任者所需的，但在多年的紧张之后，这些机构和程序似乎正在磨损。
“我们必须降级，”拜登周日在金斯堡去世后的第一次延长讲话中说。“冷却火焰……吞没我们的国家。”
周一，他在威斯康辛州进行了25分钟的演讲，根本没有提到法庭。“我们必须团结全国，”他说。“那将是我的主要工作。”
这种做法让受过去国会山一团和气时代影响的前参议员拜登陷入了意识形态的激烈争论，以至于掩盖了金斯伯格作为法律巨人、女权英雄和87岁高龄的流行文化偶像的记忆。
拜登是否正确不仅将决定他在11月的前景，还将决定他一旦上任，除了司法确认之外，还能获得什么样的立法成功。
“有时这听起来很幼稚，”进步工党和民主党领袖拉里·科恩说，他支持拜登，但希望他在改革国会山的工作方式上更加强硬。
拜登和他的民主党同僚一起谴责共和党在离选举如此之近的时候迅速进行确认——特别是考虑到共和党拒绝考虑巴拉克·奥巴马总统的最后一位最高法院提名人梅里克·加兰(Merrick Garland)，这是在2016年3月选举日的八个月前。然而，至少在公开场合，拜登没有接受一些民主党人和进步人士的呼吁，敦促他威胁进行具体报复。
各种团体已经希望拜登支持废除参议院阻挠议案，以便任何事情都能以多数票通过。现在，一些人希望拜登补充警告，民主党多数派和拜登总统将在第一次机会时扩大最高法院。
即使是参议院少数党领袖查克·舒默(Chuck Schumer)，一个像拜登一样的完美的民主党当权派，也宣布如果特朗普和参议院多数党领袖米奇·麦康奈尔(Mitch McConnell)在拒绝加兰的确认投票四年后巩固了6比3的保守超级多数席位，“没有什么是不可能的”。加兰将在2016年以5比4的优势支持民主党任命的人，金斯伯格的去世使法院以4比4的优势获胜。
加剧紧张局势是另一个基本动力。共和党在参议院拥有53个席位的多数席位，但该团体总共代表的美国人比民主党核心小组的47名参议员少数百万，获得的总票数也少数百万。特朗普是连续第二位在第一次选举中没有赢得全国普选的共和党总统。事实上，自1988年以来，共和党人只赢得了一次总统普选:乔治·w·布什总统在2004年的连任。
拜登和特朗普的顾问一致认为，民主党几乎肯定会在今年再次获胜。
“民主正被限制在精英和他们的少数群体中，”科恩说，他是推动结束阻挠议事的领导人之一。
然而，拜登并没有哀叹美国机构的奇怪转变。相反，他将自己的竞选活动押在了捍卫这个建筑上。
“我要说些离谱的话。我知道如何让政府运作，”拜登在2019年5月18日费城的第一次大型集会上说。
在今年冬天的爱荷华州党团会议之前，他在埃姆斯宣布，“我们的宪法是以一种除非我们能够达成共识，否则无法发挥作用的方式建立的。”
事实上，作为一名前六届参议员和两届副总统，拜登讲述了他认为可以重复的打耳光和达成协议的故事。
“妥协不是脏字;这就是我们政府的工作方式，”他今年夏天告诉教师工会的听众。“我做了一辈子。”
也许更准确地说，拜登一直处于国会山的发展过程中。
1987年，当民主党人抛弃了罗纳德·里根总统提名的一名有争议的最高法院法官时，他是参议院司法委员会主席。罗伯特·博克是保守派法律界的宠儿，他获得了最低票，但只获得了42票，其中包括两名民主党人。58名反对者中有6名共和党人。此举激怒了保守派，并催生了高度组织化的活动家网络。近年来，共和党人利用这一网络在确认他们更喜欢的法学家方面取得了巨大成功。
但值得注意的是，里根随后提名的安东尼·肯尼迪(Anthony Kennedy)也获得了一致确认。最后一次投票发生在1988年总统选举的早期。
当比尔·克林顿总统在1993年提名金斯堡时，她的自由主义资历和观点已经确立。反正她是96-3确诊的。从克林顿的第二个任期开始，党派之争愈演愈烈。2013年，民主党以共和党阻挠为由，阻挠地区上诉法院的法官。麦康奈尔和共和党人在2017年效仿，结束了最高法院法官的阻挠议事行为。拜登曾无缝地引导肯尼迪的提名，他投票反对乔治·布什的两个提名人:首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨和大法官塞缪尔·阿利托。
在同一时期，两党立法交易减少了。
布什标志性的国内政策，《不让一个孩子掉队教育法》，有一个今天无法想象的参议院冠军:已故的泰德·肯尼迪，马萨诸塞州的“自由之狮”。拜登在竞选活动中经常声称，他在担任副总统期间，为2009年的经济救助计划游说了三名关键的参议院共和党人——但其中只有一名参议员，缅因州的苏珊·科林斯仍留在参议院，她面临着艰难的连任之战。奥巴马标志性的国内立法胜利《平价医疗法案》在国会获得通过，没有一个共和党人投票，只是因为民主党人采取了程序性措施来避免最终的阻挠。
现在，尽管参议院共和党人似乎准备快速获得法院确认，但在新冠肺炎疫情期间，国会仍无法就另一项经济稳定法案达成一致。
科恩认为，这些趋势几乎没有理由认为拜登和民主党参议院多数派在气候危机、移民法或枪支管制等重大问题上“甚至可以获得最低票数”。
金斯伯格去世的前一天，拜登重申了他的乐观态度。“特朗普总统不在的情况下”，他预测他会找到“6到8个”共和党参议员与新的民主党多数派合作。
“我将成为美国总统，”拜登坚持说，“而不是民主党总统。”
Biden's push for unity faces test with Supreme Court fight
From the opening of his third presidential bid,Joe Bidenhas argued that he is in a unique position to mend a fractured nation and work — even with Republicans — to “unify the country” into some semblance of consensus.
That central thesis of the Democratic presidential nominee's campaign is being severely tested by the battle over the future of the Supreme Court.
In the week since liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, he's faced pressure from progressives seeking bolder action. And most Republicans in the Senate, a place where Biden spent 36 years of his career, have ignored his calls to wait until after the election to approve a successor. President Donald Trump is expected to name his pick on Saturday, launching a confirmation process that may only deepen the nation's sectarian politics.
For now, Biden is holding his ground, defending the purpose and function of institutions and governing processes that are needed to install Ginsburg’s successor but appear to be fraying after years of strain.
“We have to de-escalate,” Biden said on Sunday in his first extended remarks after Ginsburg’s death. “Cool the flames … engulfing our nation.”
He followed up Monday in Wisconsin during a 25-minute speech where he didn’t mention the court at all. “We have to bring the nation together,” he said. “That’s going to be my primary job.”
The approach leaves Biden, a former senator shaped by a bygone era of Capitol Hill bonhomie, between ideological firing lines so intense as to risk overshadowing remembrances of Ginsburg as a legal giant, feminist hero and, late in her 87 years, a pop culture icon.
Whether Biden is right will determine not only his prospects in November but what kind of legislative success, well beyond judicial confirmations, he could muster once in office.
“Sometimes it sounds naïve,” said progressive labor and Democratic Party leader Larry Cohen, who supports Biden but wants him to be more forceful about overhauling how Capitol Hill works.
Biden is with his fellow Democrats in decrying a swift GOP-run confirmation so close to an election – especially given Republicans’ refusal to consider President Barack Obama’s last Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, in March 2016, eight months before Election Day. Yet, at least publicly, Biden is not entertaining calls among some Democrats and progressives urging him to threaten specific retaliation.
Various groups already wanted Biden to endorse abolishing the Senate filibuster to allow anything to pass by majority vote. Now some want Biden to add the warning that a Democratic majority and President Biden would expand the Supreme Court at their first opportunity.
Even Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a consummate establishment Democrat like Biden, has declared that “nothing is off the table” if Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell go through with cementing a 6-3 conservative supermajority four years after denying Garland a confirmation vote. Garland would have tilted the court 5-4 in favor of Democratic appointees in 2016, with Ginsburg's death leaving a 4-4 court.
Inflaming tensions are other fundamental dynamics. Republicans hold a 53-seat Senate majority, but that group collectively represents millions fewer Americans and got millions fewer combined votes than the 47 senators in the Democratic caucus. Trump is the second consecutive Republican president not to win the national popular vote in his first election. In fact, since 1988 Republicans have won the presidential popular vote just one time: President George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004.
Advisers to Biden and Trump agree that Democrats almost certainly will win it again this year, too.
“Democracy is being restricted to the elite and their minority,” said Cohen, among the leaders pushing to end the filibuster.
Yet Biden doesn’t lament the curious turns of the nation’s institutions. Rather, he’s staked his campaign on defending the structure.
“I’m gonna say something outrageous. I know how to make government work,” Biden said at his first big rally in Philadelphia on May, 18, 2019.
Ahead of the Iowa caucuses this winter, he declared in Ames that, “Our Constitution is built in a way that literally it cannot function unless we are able to arrive at consensus.”
Indeed, as a former six-term senator and two-term vice president, Biden tells stories of back-slapping and deal-making that he contends can be reprised.
“Compromise is not a dirty word; it’s how our government is designed to work,” he told a teachers union audience this summer. “I’ve done it my whole life.”
Perhaps more accurately, Biden has been in the middle of Capitol Hill's evolution.
He was Senate Judiciary Chairman in 1987 when Democrats jettisoned a controversial Supreme Court nominee from President Ronald Reagan. Robert Bork, a favorite in conservative legal circles, got a floor vote but garnered just 42 votes, including two Democrats. Six Republicans were among the 58 nays. The move incensed conservatives and gave birth to the highly organized activist network that Republicans have used to great success in confirming their preferred jurists in recent years.
But it’s worth noting that a subsequent Reagan nominee for the same vacancy, Anthony Kennedy, was confirmed unanimously. The final vote occurred early in the presidential election year of 1988.
When President Bill Clinton nominated Ginsburg in 1993, her liberal credentials and outlook were well-established. She was confirmed 96-3 anyway. Partisan wrangling intensified from Clinton's second term onward. Democrats spiked the filibuster for regional appeals court judges in 2013, citing Republican obstruction. McConnell and Republicans followed suit in 2017 by ending filibusters for Supreme Court justices. Biden, who’d once shepherded Kennedy’s nomination through seamlessly, voted against both of George W. Bush’s nominees: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.
Over the same period, bipartisan legislative deals waned.
Bush’s signature domestic policy, the No Child Left Behind education law, had a Senate champion unthinkable today: the late Ted Kennedy, the “liberal lion” from Massachusetts. Biden often claims while campaigning that he cajoled three key Senate Republican votes for a 2009 economic rescue package when he was vice president – but just one of those senators, Susan Collins of Maine, remains in the Senate, and she faces a tough re-election battle. Obama’s signature domestic legislative win, the Affordable Care Act, got through Congress without a single Republican vote and only because Democrats managed procedural moves to avoid a final filibuster.
Now, even as Senate Republicans seemed poised to fast-track a court confirmation, Congress remains unable to agree on another economic stabilization bill amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Those trends, Cohen argued, offer little reason to think Biden and Democratic Senate majority “could even get floor votes” on major efforts on the climate crisis, immigration law or gun regulations.
A day before Ginsburg’s death, Biden reiterated his optimism. “With President Trump out of the way” he predicted he'd find “somewhere between six and eight” GOP senators to work with a new Democratic majority.
“I’m going to be America’s president,” Biden insisted, “not a Democratic president.”
