Unity and progress: Mitch McConnell leaves no doubt they’re fundamentally incompatible

On the 106th day of the 1,461-day term of Joe Biden, a man who earned more votes than any president ever elected and who from the start has aspired to unify the nation and backed up that rhetoric with action, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell left no doubt: His Republicans aim to foreclose any chance at bipartisan compromise.

With those cards now on the table, the president must respond accordingly. If he didn’t realize it already — and we suspect, despite his rhetoric, he did — Biden and fellow Democrats must treat the period between now and the November 2022 elections, when Republicans will quite possibly take the House and reclaim the Senate, as their only opportunity to get big things through Congress.

“One hundred percent of my focus is standing up to this administration,” McConnell proclaimed last week. “What we have in the United States Senate is total unity from Susan Collins to Ted Cruz in opposition to what the new Biden administration is trying to do to this country.”

That’s declaring the entire Biden agenda — from making major investments in American infrastructure to helping families afford education, child-care and senior care, to say nothing of gun background checks or immigration reform — DOA. It’s the mirror image of the anti-Trump “resistance” that motivated some on the far left (but not all Democrats, as some tried to work with the last president on immigration, guns and other issues), which didn’t deter Trump from huge tax cuts, attempts to kill Obamacare and the stacking of the Supreme Court with extreme conservatives.

We want sane Republicans to work with Biden in furtherance of the greater good. We would rather Biden get a half loaf out of the oven rather than wind up with a full loaf’s worth of raw dough rotting on the counter. But if it turns out the GOP is genuinely determined to walk in lockstep against every Biden proposal, Democrats must move boldly and swiftly forward. Paralysis is not an option.