… To Biden and like-minded Democrats, working with the GOP whenever possible is good policy and good politics, a way for the president to fulfill what pollsters agree was one of his most popular campaign promises. But Biden’s repeated emphasis on his ability to cooperate with Republicans has stirred concerns among some Democrats, anti-Trump Republicans, and nonpartisan democracy advocates, that he is obscuring the threat mounting against democratic institutions as Trump strengthens his hold over the GOP, and extremists such as Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar solidify their beachhead in it. The overriding fear is that more Republicans appear to be radicalizing by the week and Biden is making the GOP seem normal.
Charlie Sykes, the former conservative talk-radio host and a co-founder of The Bulwark, an online publication for anti-Trump Republicans, wrote recently that although Biden “was elected to restore a sense of ‘normalcy’ … these are not normal times, and perhaps the reality is that a normal approach to politics in profoundly abnormal times is a formula for political disaster.” Similarly, Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, a co-founder and the chief strategy officer of the liberal group Way to Win, told me she worries that Biden’s “focusing on bipartisanship undermines our argument … when we are trying to point out the GOP’s extremism.” …
The issue, she said, isn’t just Biden: Way to Win’s research found that Democratic House candidates in 2020 spent substantially on advertising that touted their willingness to work with Republicans, while Republicans ran ads that painted Democrats as dangerous radicals. Democrats, she said, must abolish that imbalance. “If Biden wants to focus on bipartisanship, then we need other parts of the Democratic family to make sure we are telling that story about GOP extremism,” Fernandez Ancona said. CONTINUED
Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic
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