"Let’s get together. We’ve got to figure out how we’re going to move forward here," Joe Biden said to congressional Republicans, offering an olive branch. "Because there are so many things we really do agree on."
But that was the Joe Biden of 2020, just weeks before the presidential election — and when the mainstream media was still selling an all-too-gullible public on the notion that Biden would serve as our country's "Negotiator-in-Chief." Biden's five decades (ugh) on Capitol Hill and in the Obama White House gave him the wisdom and experience needed to heal the country's partisan wounds, they claimed.
Sure, Longtime Sharp VodkaPundit Readers™ knew it was a steaming crock — but now even Democrats are privately saying, "Don't ask Grampa Joe to set the Christmas dinner table. He'll eat all the butter and accidentally stab someone with a spoon."
Before we get to that, here's a lightning-fast recap of the stakes: Ukraine is running short on artillery shells and everything else, and our southern border has vanished. Congressional Republicans are willing to give Biden the Ukraine aid he wants if he'll agree to more funding for border enforcement. A compromise has already passed the House, but negotiations that had been going on for more than two months stalled last week in the Senate before they broke for Christmas.
Before things broke down was where Super Joe, Negotiator-in-Chief, was supposed to jump in, but his fellow Democrats were saying, "Nah, we're good."
There's a report in The Hill today quite unlike anything I've ever seen in the 40-plus years I've been a political junky. (Yes, since I was 11 — I was a weird kid.) It turns out that it's Democrats worried that if they give Biden a seat at the negotiating table, he'll screw things up.
The Hill story says that "some Democratic senators are worried that if Biden got into a room with McConnell or other Senate GOP negotiators, he might end up cutting a deal on border and asylum policy that will enrage their party’s base." Speaking anonymously to the paper, one Dem senator described the "leeriness fellow Democrats feel about making Biden the point person in the talks."
“A totally legitimate concern is if you’re not reasonably close [to a deal], there’s no reason to put him in a room … He could be dragged anywhere,” he said. Once Grampa Joe gets to talking, you never know what he'll say or agree to anymore.
But this is where things get completely Byzantine. Democrat sabotage against Biden is also coming from inside the house — the White House, that is. "The handling of the talks is now raising eyebrows in Washington," according to The Hill, "particularly among Republicans who suspect the White House did not want Biden to agree to a deal."
Who's in charge of the Biden White House, anyway? Some suspect that it's actually Barack Obama, and you could certainly include your friendly neighborhood VodkaPundit among the some.
This is the third hit piece I've written on Biden in the last 24 hours. I'm not trying to be cruel or hyperpartisan — it's just that when the target keeps popping up a mere five yards away, you've got to take your shot.
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