Mr. Reid, the last Democratic majority leader, was blunter. “To think that, with what McConnell has done to change the Senate forever, he is going to step in there and things will be just hunky dory, it won’t be,” Mr. Reid said. Many of Mr. Biden’s closest advisers and former colleagues say he is still loath to burn bridges with Republicans. Instead, they believed they could more effectively tap into voter anger in the midterms if they united in opposition. “If they choose to repeat 2009, and McConnell slaps his hand away, then we’ve got choices to make,” said Mr. Coons, who in 2017 co-wrote a bipartisan letter defending the filibuster.

Source: New York Times August 20, 2020 07:00 UTC