It was reeeeeally dumb of her to put a dent in President Norms’s “heal the nation” pitch by gratuitously insulting the opposition.

But I think it’d also be reeeeeally dumb of Sleepy Joe to force her to apologize, knowing how that’ll piss off some of his own voters. “But they are f***ers! Trump’s been trying to stage a coup for the past month and hardly any of them have uttered a peep!”

As a member of a group whom the president once described as “human scum,” I think we all should try to insult each other less but also try to roll with it when it inevitably happens.

Some advisers close to President-elect Joe Biden are frustrated over a Glamour magazine interview in which incoming White House deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon referred to Republicans on Capitol Hill as “f*ckers.”…

Some donors want O’Malley Dillon, his campaign manager, to apologize — to Biden and perhaps to congressional Republicans…

“For those of us who, from Day One, bought into Biden’s calls for civility and a return to normalcy, this isn’t just beyond the pale — it’s plain stupid,” said one Biden donor…

Biden confidants don’t necessarily disagree with O’Malley Dillon’s darker sentiments; they disagree with her decision to say them for public consumption.

“They *are* f***ers but no one should be saying so on the record” is an … interesting approach to restoring the soul of America. On the other hand, if Ted Cruz could look past Trump insulting his wife during the 2016 primaries and offer to commit a little light sedition on his behalf, we should probably expect Cocaine Mitch to pull himself together after O’Malley Dillon’s insult and huddle with Biden on some things.

Biden has been quite optimistic this week about convincing some Senate Republicans to work with him:

In a meeting on Monday, Biden insisted to supporters that he could work with Republicans, despite the continued refusal of some GOP senators even to acknowledge his victory. “I may eat these words, but I predict to you: As Donald Trump’s shadow fades away, you’re going to see an awful lot change,” Biden said on a call with grass-roots supporters…

“You’re going to be surprised,” Biden promised. “We’re going to have a lot of people wanting to work with us.”…

Biden told supporters Monday that he believed he could find common ground on areas such as an infrastructure program and relations with China, particularly with the senators he has spoken to in recent weeks.

That list includes Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump’s closest allies in the Senate, The Post has learned. Others include Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who was the Republicans’ 2012 presidential standard-bearer.

Graham, Collins, Toomey, and Romney make four. Biden will need another six to beat a filibuster even if Warnock and Ossoff come through for him in the Georgia runoffs. Where does he get those votes? The good news for him is that the post-MAGA nationalist GOP shouldn’t be as staunchly opposed in “principle” to Democratic initiatives as the tea-party-era GOP was. Obama wanted to expand government in various ways, the tea party wanted to shrink it. Not a lot of common ground there. But the post-MAGA GOP wants to reposition itself as a working-class party, one much more willing to spend money to help average Americans than the tea party was. Witness the unlikely alliance this week between Bernie Sanders and Josh Hawley on including stimulus checks as part of the new COVID relief package. If President Sleepy Joe floated a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan, promising lots of new jobs in the process, which way would Hawley go on that? Tom Cotton? Other Republican senators with an eye on 2024 or 2028?

One last point about O’Malley Dillon. Although her insult to Republicans was foolish given Biden’s campaign message and the hard reality of Senate math, her underlying point was useful in a hyperpartisan era. Namely, you don’t need to like the opposition to work with them. “In the primary, people would mock him, like, ‘You think you can work with Republicans?’ I’m not saying they’re not a bunch of f***ers. Mitch McConnell is terrible. But this sense that you couldn’t wish for that, you couldn’t wish for this bipartisan ideal? He rejected that,” she said of Biden. She’s worried, rightly, about antipathy between the parties (particularly the parties’ bases) steering their elected leaders to take a rejectionist approach to legislation. You can think McConnell or Biden is a f***er and still vote for an infrastructure bill they support, she’s saying. That’s true, and it’d be nice if that logic applied on bills besides must-pass stuff like COVID relief. Proposal: Both sides get to call each other f***ers openly so long as they’re allowed to compromise on bills of mutual benefit.