“Honestly, if I were the president, looking at my numbers on this, I’d want to do something about it. It might actually improve his position.” That was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s public advice to Joe Biden, offered on December 5, encouraging him to make concessions on border policy.
The following day, Biden effectively embraced the advice, saying, “I am willing to make significant compromises on the border.”
A week later, Biden offered his own advice to McConnell, albeit without mentioning his name. Standing next to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House, Biden cited a Russian television commentator who praised Senate Republicans for blocking a Democratic Ukraine aid bill. (He charitably did not quote the commentator’s specific praise of McConnell, “Well done Gramps,” but undoubtedly McConnell is aware of it.) “If you’re being celebrated by Russian propagandists,” warned Biden, “it might be time to rethink what you’re doing.”
The following day, negotiations appeared to advance. Bloomberg, citing Senate Republicans, reported, “President Joe Biden has offered changes to US border policy that raises the prospects of a bipartisan deal.”
For McConnell and Biden to openly share political counsel is not all that shocking. Both have referred to each other as “friend,” having worked together since the Kentuckian arrived in Washington as a freshly minted U.S. Senator in 1985 when Biden was starting his third term. Biden has a devotion to bipartisanship. McConnell has spent almost nine years chafing at Donald Trump’s dominating role in the party and its tilt toward Russia. For his part, Trump has disparaged the 81-year-old as “Old Crow,” once telling a reporter, “The Old Crow’s a piece of shit.” Moreover, Trump has insulted and demeaned the GOP leader’s wife, Elaine Chao, even though she was his Secretary of Transportation.
Biden, however, is the one who needs the most help, with his job approval dipping below 40 percent in the FiveThirtyEight and Real Clear Politics averages. McConnell is unlikely to run for reelection in 2026 and only has to worry about his legacy. The New York Times recently speculated, “There is widespread belief that he could step down as leader next year, and his strong push for Ukraine money was seen not only as backing his view on world affairs, but a final bit of legacy-building for his brand of foreign policy.”
McConnell has to know that the only way his brand of foreign policy lasts beyond his tenure is if Biden is re-elected.
The Old Crow’s calculations would be different if Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, had a real shot to win the Republican presidential primary.
Haley ticked up in primary polls after attacking Vivek Ramaswamy’s neo-isolationist foreign policy positions. But those gains haven’t put her in spitting distance of Trump. About one month before the first contests, in the most recent polls, she trails the frontrunner by 35 points in Iowa and 27 in New Hampshire.
The recent endorsement from Charles Koch’s political network hasn’t moved the needle, just as endorsements from Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats haven’t for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Expecting Haley’s latest marquee endorser, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, to be a game-changer is wishful thinking.
If you think Joe Biden’s endorsement from Representative Jim Clyburn ahead of his 2020 South Carolina primary victory means Sununu can do the same for Haley in New Hampshire, think again. Biden was never behind in South Carolina polling, let alone trailing by double-digits.
As I’ve noted, we don’t have any historical examples of a primary candidate making up around 30 points in the final four weeks before the early states against a well-known frontrunner holding a consistent lead over months of polling.
The closest recent example is the 2012 Iowa caucus win by former Republican Senator Rick Santorum, who was trailing Newt Gingrich by 25 points in December. But Gingrich only grabbed the top spot in Iowa polling in November, late in the cycle, then quickly collapsed under the weight of his past controversial statements and history of marital infidelity.
Besides, that was back when Republican primary candidates could use such controversies to attack the frontrunner. This year, every Trump controversy, including multiple indictments, prompted most of his Republican rivals to defend or chide him lightly and indirectly and voters to stand by him.
In all likelihood, the fight for the Republican presidential nomination will be effectively over after Iowa’s January 15 caucuses and New Hampshire’s January 23 primary, a little less than six weeks away.
McConnell understands that a Trump sequel will be exponentially more horrifying than the original, particularly regarding foreign policy where the likes of first-term guard rails like Defense Secretary James Mattis won’t be anywhere to be found. Trump’s minions are already vetting potential administration officials to ensure that, unlike last time, no one gets hired who will check his worst impulses.
Trump will hug Putin tighter, carve up Ukraine, undermine NATO, and, as reported by Politico, may even send cash to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and let him keep his nuclear arsenal. The Old Crow does not want to live to see such a day.
Trump cannot win if Republicans from the Ronald Reagan-Mitt Romney-Mitch McConnell school of foreign policy defect. (Romney himself kept open the possibility of voting for Biden last Sunday, saying, “I’m not gonna describe who I’ll rule out other than President Trump.”)
Of course, it is implausible McConnell would endorse Biden, even if he privately wants him to win. (Thanks to a GOP-friendly 2024 Senate map, McConnell can reasonably expect, if not know for certain, that a second Biden term would be constrained by a Republican-controlled Senate). But McConnell can buoy Biden by helping deliver a Ukraine aid-border security grand bargain.
The faulty zero-sum logic underpinning the Trumpian “America First” mentality argues that aid given to a foreign nation is aid subtracted from America. A bipartisan bill that helps restore order to the Mexican border while simultaneously helping Ukraine preserve its sovereignty debunks the MAGA narrative.
Indeed, some of the proposed concessions are distasteful to Democrats. But the status quo is not an option for Biden. Unlike Trump’s manufactured panic in 2018 about the “caravan,” today’s migrant influx is unprecedented and causing real hardship in several cities. Yes, immigration is good for America’s labor market in the long run, but our municipalities can’t provide immediate shelter for thousands of daily arrivals of asylum seekers. Biden has tried to address the problem creatively through executive orders, but his powers are limited, and what authority he has asserted faces legal challenges.
The president needs a legislative solution, which requires tough compromise with the likes of McConnell. While White House concessions could strain the Democratic coalition, a bipartisan deal drives a stake through the Republican coalition, cleaving Trump’s MAGA wing from McConnell’s old guard, perhaps even sending the famously fractured Republican-controlled House into yet another leadership crisis.
If McConnell is primarily interested in helping Republicans take back the White House, he would not support a Ukraine aid-border security deal. If he does help engineer such a deal, you know who he wants to win in November, even if he’ll never admit it.
