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**JULY 23, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

Biden's Blurts

****

Joe Biden's unscripted comments on filibuster reform at a CNN town
hall appalled his most devoted supporters. At a time when the whole ball
game for getting voting rights through Congress is getting Joe Manchin
to revise his opposition to suspending the filibuster, Biden seemed to
be siding with Manchin, and then some.

Was this some kind of too-clever-by-half bank shot, in which Biden
signals respect for the Republicans, and allies himself with Manchin
now, in order to have more influence with Manchin later on?

Biden's reverie seemed all too genuine. Our colleague, Harold
Meyerson, concludes that Biden is "simply still a creature of the Senate
."

Yet what Biden actually said wasn't all that bad, just muddled. He
indicated that the filibuster has a long history of abuse as a Jim Crow
relic, that he had previously supported a return to the "talking
filibuster," and then delivered this impossible-to-parse sentence:
"There's no reason to protect it other than you're going to throw
the entire Congress into chaos, and nothing will get done."

Say what? Critics pounced on this as indicating Biden's die-hard
support for keeping the filibuster-which is one way of reading it. But
mainly, Biden's intent was murky and his words ill chosen.

What we have, gentle reader, is another case of the Biden Blurt. Our
president did the same thing when he almost upset a carefully balanced
applecart that was carrying the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Biden
blurted out the tacit deal that Democrats would commit to supporting the
bipartisan half-loaf now and come back for the rest in reconciliation.

That could have led Republicans to walk away from the deal. The staff
managed to walk that back and contain the damage.

In our great enthusiasm for Biden's mostly superb appointments and his
embrace of an agenda far more progressive than anyone dared hope, we
tend to forget Biden's long-standing weakness for unfortunate ad-lib
blurts when he goes off script. I'm not even sure this is the result
of his age-he has been doing this for decades.

Happily, Biden has a superb senior staff, and they run a very tight
ship. How to say this kindly and politely? (There is no good way.) Good
people on Biden's staff: Please work a little harder to limit the
impromptu opportunities and keep

**Der Alte** on script.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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