Why a national unity government wouldn't work now

While Biden himself triumphed in the 2020 primaries with a message of bipartisanship and unity, how willing would his party have been to embrace a national unity administration? Suppose Biden had said at the outset that combating the threat to free and fair elections had to be the dominant focus of his administration, that “Dr. Build Back Better” had to take a back seat to “Dr. Save the Republic”?

The cries of outrage would have been overpowering: We have total control of the Congress; we will likely lose at least one house in 2022; it’s now or never for these programs — all of them.

And what’s true of domestic policy matters would have been doubly so of contentious social issues. Before indulging in the notion of a bipartisan ticket, ask yourself how many Democrats you know who would support a ticket where the vice president was against abortion rights, supported open-carry gun laws or voted for the confirmations of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.