Very good column by Maureen Dowd today:

...Mr. President, here’s a suggestion: Ditch that other old habit of yours, bending over backward to appease Republicans. I know it’s a point of pride, but let’s be honest. It has led to all of your worst moments — letting Anita Hill down, letting the Iraq war start, letting Mitch McConnell sucker you on the 2012 fiscal cliff deal. [Owie]

Biden should do what he can to help Senate Democrats dilute the filibuster. And he should insist on the passage of the voting rights bill the Senate designed to target the voter suppression efforts enacted in Georgia, just a preview of what’s to come in other states...[And] couldn’t he finally make progress on the nation’s most shameful issue — blind worship of the AR-15?

Bipartisanship — or Bidenpartisanship — ain’t happening now. Washington is not built for unity at the moment. We live in a world where everyone is unappeasable.

...it must be dawning on Biden that “the willingness of most congressional Republicans to endorse Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the November election and their unwillingness to convict Trump for his role in the violent putsch of January 6” proves “there can be no illusions of accord, or even of civilized dispute.” (quoting Fintan O'Toole)

With the Senate and House majorities threatened in next year’s elections, there is a very narrow window to do great things. And with his first two initiatives, the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill and the $3 trillion spending package, beginning with infrastructure, that is laced with climate change and income inequality measures, he seems to be savoring his new image as someone who goes for the big and bold.

[As an article in the same issue of NYT relates the problem with everything Ms. Dowd writes is two words: Joe. Manchin. Going big is not in Biden's sole discretion, nor even in the discretion of the Democratic Party. Because: Joe. Manchin. Biden has seen the light coming from that narrow window. Bipartisanship flew out of there. Biden made little attempt to gain even one Republican's vote on his COVID bill. But to get that done he had to have Joe. Manchin. To Manchin, bipartisanship is not a distant past chimera, it lives, it breathes. To Manchin the filibuster is not the brick wall to doing big things, the filibuster is a big thing. Gun control? "Guns are part of our culture in West Virginia."]

One recent evening, Biden met with historians in the East Room for two hours...The president seemed interested in activist presidencies, ones that took on big problems, like Lincoln, F.D.R. and L.B.J.
...
Republicans are out of touch with their own voters...“Republican voters agree with what I’m doing,” Biden said. [at his Wednesday press conference.]

The president knows that the American identity is on the line.