Lucy, the Football, and “Bipartisanship”

Biden needs to avoid the old rope-a-dope

Thom Hartmann
5 min readFeb 19, 2021
Photo by Ryan Reinoso on Unsplash

“Bipartisanship” is the word of the day. But what the heck does that mean?

News commentators are asking Democrats on TV, as happened to Patrick Leahy on CNN this morning, “Without bipartisanship, won’t your legislative efforts further divide the country?”

This is a BS question. It’s also the Republican’s song every time Democrats get political power; it’s even how they repeatedly crippled the Obama presidency, and the Democrats repeatedly fell for it during the 2009–2017 Obama era. They need to stop.

“You must compromise your values and principles,” Republican politicians say whenever Democrats are in charge, “and you must go against what the majority of Americans, including the majority of Republicans, want in order to get a vote from us.” They call that kind of Democratic submission to their bizarre demands “bipartisanship.”

But it’s not. There’s nothing bipartisan about gutting programs the majority of America’s Democratic and Republican voters want just because Republican politicians demand it.

“Bipartisanship” is the roadblock to guaranteeing voting rights to all American citizens, to rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, and to guaranteeing health and educational rights…

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Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann

Written by Thom Hartmann

America’s #1 progressive talk show host & NY Times bestselling author. Thom’s writings also appear at HartmannReport.com.