Paul Krugman has thoughts on how President- elect Biden should deal with Republican obstruction and sabotage:
...[A]lthough Biden is still talking in a comforting way about unity and reaching across the aisle, at some point he’ll need to stop reassuring us that he’s nothing like Trump and start making Republicans pay a political price for their attempts to prevent him from governing. [snip]
No, what Biden needs to do is what Harry Truman did in 1948, when he built political support by running against “do-nothing” Republicans. And he’ll have a better case than Truman ever did, because today’s Republicans are infinitely more corrupt and less patriotic than the Republicans Truman faced.
This scenario would be altered significantly should Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff win the special Senate election in Georgia next month (Stacy Abrams would be happy to have your help on that). Even if Democrats were to take the Senate, eliminating the filibuster seems out of reach, with conservaDem Sen. Joe Manchin in opposition.
Regardless, it's already been made clear by Senate Republicans that they'll obstruct Biden's cabinet choices, judicial nominations, and anything else they can to try to make Biden a one- term president, just as they tried with Barack Obama. We're hopeful Biden's team is planning how to make life miserable for Moscow Mitch McConnell and his party- before- country caucus when they begin their obstruction (we're sure they're smart enough to be well ahead of us on that). Using every media platform they can to drive home the image of a spiteful, reactionary, recalcitrant Trumpist party in the Senate that's engaged in keeping businesses shuttered, our government from functioning, while thousands of lives hang in the balance must be one of the priorities of this effort. Biden's election was a mandate, and efforts to sabotage his administration are sabotaging the will of the American people.
Other pressure points must be attacked as well to keep these two- legged rats on defense. With Democrats holding the House, there should be opportunities for Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Schumer to come up with a coordinated strategy to do just that. They're dealing with a bad faith party that, as Krugman points out, is infinitely more corrupt and less patriotic than ever. They must deal with it accordingly.
