Must-Read thread by Michael Grunwald on how important Biden was to Obama's accomplishments

[highplainsdem]

15. The bill had no Republican support in the House, but didn't need them for passage. Republican votes

WERE needed in the Senate, and Biden got three Republicans to join Democrats in voting for the bill.

Remember that McConnell was determined that Obama would fail.


http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23/the-party-of-no-new-details-on-the-gop-plot-to-obstruct-obama/

• Vice President Biden told me that during the transition, he was warned not to expect any bipartisan cooperation on major votes. “I spoke to seven different Republican Senators who said, ‘Joe, I’m not going to be able to help you on anything,’ ” he recalled. His informants said McConnell had demanded unified resistance. “The way it was characterized to me was, ‘For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back,’ ” Biden said. The Vice President said he hasn’t even told Obama who his sources were, but Bob Bennett of Utah and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania both confirmed they had conversations with Biden along those lines.

“So I promise you — and the President agreed with me — I never thought we were going to get Republican support,” Biden said.

One of those three Republicans was Arlen Specter, and Biden did more than anyone else to convince Specter to switch parties soon after the stimulus vote:

https://www.politico.com/story/2009/04/biden-worked-on-specter-100-days-021824

If Specter hadn't switched, Democrats would not have had enough votes to pass the Affordable Care Act.


So, without Biden's ability to get that support from Republicans, with one Republican even switching parties, there would have been no stimulus, and no ACA.