Pardon me if I say that sounds hopelessly naive.* I think the Republican party has moved radically to the right, McConnell included. He may or may not have meant what he said about Hillary, but never forget he's the guy who held hundreds of court seats open in the eight years Obama was president. Then there's someone (I think it was Eric Cantor) saying that they would make sure that no legislation, nothing, that Obama wanted to do would get passed.
No offense taken... Here's why I think what I think now.
Biden is not Obama... nor the right's perception of Obama either, which also matters.
McConnell has more than made good on his desired legacy from standpoint of his base. He was ferocious about getting that third nomination to the high court secured and sworn in before the election.
Now I firmly believe he'd like to try to reclaim some rights to wear the senior statesman hat he used to be able to wear at least sometimes while Boehner was his counterpart in the House... in short before the main aim of the then still ascending House Freedom Caucus became not only to win in legislative duels across the main aisle but to paste label of Republican in Name Only on all the old guard.
That old guard in the Senate, the one that included guys like Lugar and McCain, was the one that used to reach across party lines and into the lower chamber and remind the GOP's anti-tax and budget fanatics in the House that we had a duty to meet financial obligations that were already appropriated... and so to avoid either default or shutting down the government and such antics. McConnell several times cooperated in preventing a no-win shutdown or default.
Boehner gave up and stood down; he could not control his caucuses. Ryan wasn't much better and even made a few enemies in his own house and over in the Senate just trying.
But see in the other house McConnell didn't have to give up, he was in the allegedly more deliberative chamber anyway, and at the very least it was the one that still had a pack of rules always meant for shoving into the wheels of an unruly House. What he did do was start playing more hardball across the aisle though. It's not quite the image he had preferred to maintain although it didn't hurt him during Obama's time in office, and most people realized Trump was clueless on legislative details... plus it's true it was always a GOP nightmare that Trump wasn't above just cutting a deal with Pelosi to look good if push came to shove on his approval ratings nationally. McConnell never wanted to get in the middle of one of those gigs and went to some lengths to work around Trump to avoid it.
But McConnell has an opportunity now to shift gears and see what he can get done with Biden "for America" that is more bipartisan but not "an Obama thing"... and he'll probably try to do exactly that.
Mitch McConnell is a world class cynic and pragmatist the likes of which some guy like Donald Trump could only hope to have the wit to emulate. He's actually able to come off like an American patriot while sticking it to his opposition... or at least carving some points off their take in a negotiation. He's been doing it for decades now and he's definitely part of why the whole spectrum of Democratic Party politics has been shoved rightward even as it has become a thing to call any Dem initiative "socialist".
But the thing is, see, Joe Biden is neither Barack Obama with all the partisan baggage that that name and McConnell's party together summon up, nor is Joe Biden an incompetent, selfish, ignorant thug like Donald Trump. McConnell sized Biden up a long time ago. Joe Biden is a former colleague and a peer, only now with a ton of respect from career service officials due to his having been Obama's veep, and he has way more of a following in the general electorate than McConnell can ever hope for. So I don't think we're gonna see gridlock in the 117th Congress at all. It won't be a progressive dream though, that's for sure.
