The Biden Method
For Joe Biden, the pursuit of compromise is an end in itself. That's what happens when you see politics as a giant boys’ club rather than a site of struggle.
Former vice president Joe Biden addresses the Moral Action Congress of the Poor People’s Campaign on June 17, 2019 at Trinity Washington University in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong / Getty Images)
Even in the days when I got (to Washington), the Democratic Party still had seven or eight old-fashioned Democratic segregationists. . . . . You’d get up and you’d argue like the devil with them. Then you’d go down and have lunch or dinner together. The political system worked. We were divided on issues, but the political system worked.
During his recent address to the Poor People’s Campaign, Joe Biden fielded a question from MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid about how he would pass legislation in a future Congress controlled by the Republican Party.
True to form as a candidate whose campaign pitch primarily revolves around restoring the “normalcy” that supposedly prevailed in earlier political eras, Biden doubled down on the idea of compromise:
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