Chuck Todd opened his show this Sunday blaming Joe Biden for Republican intransigence, as though there's a single one of them in the Senate that was ever going to work with him in good faith. Todd also gave credence to the sorry excuses given by the likes of Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin and their opposition to making changes to the filibuster, the death of democracy be damned.
CHUCK TODD: President Biden - after one of the worst weeks of his presidency -- touting the infrastructure bill he signed two months ago.
PRES. JOE BIDEN: There's a lot of talk about disappointments and things we haven't gotten done. We're going to get a lot of them done, I might add.
CHUCK TODD: With the looming failure of voting rights legislation --
SEN. KYRSTEN SINEMA: I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division.
CHUCK TODD: -- and his economic plan, Build Back Better, stalled in the Senate --
SEN. JOE MANCHIN: I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can't.
CHUCK TODD: -- President Biden has been unable to bridge the wide gap between progressives and moderates in his own party and is satisfying neither group.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: It is about the Democratic party trying to restore faith with the American people that they actually stand for something.
REP. TIM RYAN: Democrats need to step up and lead this country.
CHUCK TODD: Many Democrats are calling for a reset, worried a stalled legislative agenda will hurt the party, which is already facing headwinds this fall. And a year after promising a change in tone --
PRES. JOE BIDEN: We can join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature.
CHUCK TODD: -- President Biden has failed so far to do that.
PRES. JOE BIDEN: Do you want to be the side -- on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor?SEN. MITT ROMNEY: So much for unifying the country.
SEN. DICK DURBIN: Perhaps the president went a little too far in his rhetoric.
CHUCK TODD: Outside of the infrastructure bill, a significant victory, Mr. Biden has been unable to build a small coalition of governing Republicans to make the public effort at bipartisanship that some swing state Democrats had been pleading for.
Here's one of the graphics shown during Todd's monologue.
Someone let me know which one of these Senators was ever going to vote for either the Build Back Better or voting rights bills.
Jason Easley summed up Todd's Republican water-carrying nicely at PoliticusUSA:
NBC’s Chuck Todd made it sound like it is President Biden’s fault that Republicans are refusing to work with him.
[...]
Todd’s suggestion that it is on President Biden to cater to Republicans is a common Washington, D.C. trope.
Joe Biden can’t make Republicans work with him. President Biden has reached out to Republicans in Congress throughout his first year in office.
Instead of blaming Biden, Chuck Todd should have asked why Senate Republicans are refusing to work with the president on several popular policy items. Todd could have asked why Republicans have adopted the strategy of rejecting President Biden’s efforts.
And as Easley noted, the same criticisms are never lobbed at Republicans. It's just taken as a given that they're never, ever going to work with Democrats.
