No, No, No, No, No

It's "Excerpt Two" where a fatal misreading of reality presages a possible third failed presidential campaign (click to enlarge):

The Biden campaign releases two excerpts from Biden’s speech, scheduled for delivery this afternoon in Philadelphia: pic.twitter.com/0d445h2laW

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) May 18, 2019

In response:

If I was a Republican taking the long view, I'd LOVE Biden. He could both get rid of the most obvious embarrassment about the GOP and, after 4 years of failed bipartisanship and no "epiphanies," set the party up to quickly retake the White House in 2024.

— Chad Corley (@lrbt) May 18, 2019

Unity!! https://t.co/D67aSPMAZq

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) May 18, 2019

Is Joe even paying attention to Republican state legislatures this week?  Does he really think you can meet half way on trying to kill Roe v Wade? People aren’t angry because of silly tribal bonds, they’re angry because their rights are being targeted.

— Schooley (@Rschooley) May 18, 2019

2. This is Biden's strategy in a nutshell: “Some say Democrats are angry...well I don’t believe it.” The pitch is a return to pre-2016 normality & working with GOP. It ties in with Pelosi's no impeachment & slow-walking investigation of Trump. It's pure folly.

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) May 18, 2019

He seems determined to make this pitch, doesn't he? 

The Clinton impeachment.  Swift boats.  Birtherism.  "One term president."  Obamacare sabotage.  Colluding with Russians.  Nativism.  Racism.  Homophobia.  War on women's rights.  Gun violence.  Voter suppression.  Merrick Garland.  White nationalism.  Babies in cages.  All things Trump, ffs.  And on and on, ad nauseam.

He wants to run a 1976 campaign while the country's burning down.  Somebody, make an intervention, please.  We're 50 years past the unicorn of clubby "bipartisanship."  This is a fight, and we're damn sure angry!

C'mon Joe, The Rethugs Aren't Your Buddies

Campaigning in Concord, NH yesterday, former Vice President Joe Biden commented that once sociopath and would-be autocrat Donald "Not Exonerated" Trump (a.k.a. "Individual-1") leaves office that Republicans would have "an epiphany" and work together with Democrats to govern by consensus. While Biden is clearly trying to offer a political "safe space" for those elusive Trumpers he thinks may join him, we'd have to wonder where he was during the eight years of President Obama's term in office facing the total obstruction of Rethugs in Congress, or for that matter if he remembers President Clinton fighting rabid right-wing bomb thrower House  Speaker Newt "Poot" Gingrich in the '90s. We remember President Obama's belief that after the 2012 elections that "the fever may break, because there’s a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that." How did that turn out?

Trump is not an aberration of Rethuglican politics, he's the product of it. Decades of stewing in the toxic mix of culture warfare, hate radio and Fux, and racism made Rethuglican voters crave an unfit, hate-spewing demagogue like Trump to lead them. Now that their their monster's in the Oval Office, the Rethuglicans that Biden thinks he can work with are lined up in monolithic support of Trump (see Graham, Lindsey) fearing his base. And if he thinks that the far-right Rethug base that's been cultivated over many years will experience an "epiphany," he's living in the distant past with a Rethug party that doesn't exist anymore. If Biden's elected, you can be certain that Rethugs will give no quarter and will obstruct him from day one. "Grim Reaper" Mitch McConnell has already vowed to do so.  Believe him.