As centrist Republicans winnow out, Joe Biden's cross-aisle appeal may decline with them. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images 2020 elections ‘Wrong on most everything’: GOP smacks down Biden’s bipartisanship The former vice president’s vow to find common ground with Republicans likely needs a reality check.

Joe Biden is making his bipartisan bona fides a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, boasting recently that he persuaded three Republican senators to support the economic stimulus that helped save the country from catastrophe.

“It was my job to find them. To persuade them to vote for it. And I did,” he said in Philadelphia this weekend.


The only problem: Olympia Snowe is retired, Arlen Specter is dead and Susan Collins will be defeated if Democrats get their way next year.

So when the former vice president talks about the GOP having an “epiphany” and working with him if and when he beats President Donald Trump, lawmakers in both parties are skeptical.

“If anyone can do it, it would be Joe Biden,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). “But a lot of those people are gone. States have changed. Washington’s changed.”

The centrist wing of the GOP has been hollowed out not just by retirements and death but by the party’s sharp turn right in recent years. The number of Republicans eager to collaborate with a Democratic president might be relegated to Collins and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on some days, and it would take more than them to build the 60-vote coalition Biden would need to advance his agenda.

And the Senate Republicans that remain in the relative middle of the GOP say that while their party may have changed, so has Biden as he runs as a standard progressive.

“He does have relationships, that’s true. But he doesn’t sound like the old Joe Biden that most of us knew when he was here in the Senate,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said.

“I love Joe Biden,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the few GOP dealmakers who once worked with Biden. “I think he’s been wrong on most everything.”

Biden’s approach is in stark contrast to that of other leading Democratic candidates, who are advertising ways that they can steamroll or make end runs around Republicans rather than cooperate with them. Kamala Harris is looking at executive actions, Elizabeth Warren is threatening to end the filibuster and Bernie Sanders hopes to use arcane parliamentary maneuvers to jam "Medicare for All" through budget reconciliation.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell led the GOP blockade against Obama’s entire agenda while in the Senate minority. And in the majority, he’s sidelined Democrats as he’s sought to repeal the Affordable Care Act, cut taxes and confirm conservative judges under Trump.

Warren chuckled when asked about Biden’s view of the Republican Party.

“I will not support a world where there’s one set of rules when the Republicans are in power and a different set of rules when the Democrats have the majority,” she said on Tuesday.

McConnell enjoyed a working relationship with Biden during President Barack Obama’s first term, but liberals say that there’s little reason to believe the Kentucky Republican would be in a mood to cut deals with a President Biden. Exacerbating the tension is the increasing extinction of Democratic and Republican moderates.

“I don’t know how anyone could live through the past 10 years of American politics thinking the fever in the Republican Party is going to break,” said Ezra Levin, co-executive director of progressive organization Indivisible. He said Biden’s view is “dangerous” because it might force the next president to squander time trying to work with a recalcitrant McConnell.

“I think Mitch McConnell has invested his life in obstruction and he'll invest whatever time he has left here in obstruction,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said.

Biden’s campaign did not comment for this story.

Some senators in both parties are holding out hope that partisan tensions will thaw after 2020. Sen. Tim Kaine said his motto is “high hopes and low expectations” and pointed out that he and McConnell sponsored legislation together this week.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) emphasized his support of Trump but was complimentary of Biden’s message and credited the former vice president’s lead in the polls to his bipartisan approach.

"I don't know about an epiphany but Joe Biden, to his credit, he's got a history of working well with Republicans,” Cramer said.

Some of Biden’s staunchest allies think it would be wrong not to approach his campaign with a message of restoring bipartisanship.

Biden knows “exactly how hard it is to make progress in the face of Republican obstruction,” said Sen. Chris Coons, who has endorsed his fellow Delaware Democrat. “But he’s willing to step forward, give it his best and make progress on our behalf.”

Obama predicted in 2012 that the GOP’s “fever” would break if he could win reelection. And his victory did lead the Republican Party to conduct a lengthy autopsy, with 14 Republican senators soon working on comprehensive immigration reform with Democrats.

But that bill died in the GOP-led House and Republicans soon pushed a government shutdown in a failed bid to repeal Obamacare. Senate Democrats killed the filibuster on most nominations amid a Republican blockade and the rest of Obama’s legislative agenda never got off the ground after the GOP took the Senate in 2014.

By the time 2021 rolls around, a full nine of the 14 pro-immigration GOP senators will be gone, though some newcomers, like Mitt Romney of Utah and Cory Gardner of Colorado, have some centrist sensibilities on the issue.

Though Biden is portraying Trump as an aberration, the decision to stifle Obama’s priorities was made by Republicans long before the reality-show businessman entered politics.

“It’s a different environment, different atmosphere. Obviously, when he was here he was one of those guys who had relationships on the other side and tried to work with folks,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). “But if you look at the more recent evolution of the Senate and the dynamics? It would be a bit of reach to say it will be real easy to come in and get a lot of stuff done.”

Biden acknowledges the criticism his throwback view receives: In Philadelphia, he said his critics are claiming his view is “not the way it works anymore.” He vowed to sometimes forge ahead without Republicans.

Yet even if Democrats keep the House and take back the Senate, they are unlikely to have a filibuster proof majority or anything close to it ahead of a pitched battle for Senate control in 2020. That means passing something like landmark Obama-era bills such as the Recovery Act, Obamacare or the Dodd-Frank financial reforms, would require the help of perhaps a half-dozen or more Republicans.

Even senators supporting Biden in the presidential primary said that the task of getting the GOP to work with Democrats could prove impossible.

“Every year it gets harder and harder. I understand that sentiment because it is really hard to work with ideologues and many of them are,” Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) said. “But you also can’t eliminate or foreclose the possibility that there’s a way to get some consensus.”

Republicans say they are skeptical Democrats have any interest working across the aisle anyway after fighting Trump for years.

“Today’s Democratic Party is consumed with rage and hatred for President Trump,” Sen. Ted Cruz said. The Texas Republican ran against Trump and led the fight to shut down the government over Obamacare in 2013. “It’s hard to see how Democrats prevailing at the polls would cause them to step back from the anger.”

Even if the reality is that gridlock will reign no matter who wins the presidency, polls show that Biden’s hopeful message is popular among Democratic voters. In a recent CNN poll, 77 percent of respondents said working with Republicans was important to them; only beating Trump was listed as a higher priority.

“I think people want this place to come together,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said. “So it’s a smart political message.”

