Democrats Have Their Doubts About Biden’s Bipartisan Bonhomie

Mr. Reid, the last Democratic majority leader, was blunter.

“To think that, with what McConnell has done to change the Senate forever, he is going to step in there and things will be just hunky dory, it won’t be,” Mr. Reid said. “If he wants to be a president who wants to be known for getting something done, he can’t need 60 votes for everything.” (It was Mr. Reid who terminated the filibuster on most judicial nominations).

A range of lawmakers, from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on the left to Senator Chris Coons of Delaware in the center, are reassessing their support of the legislative filibuster, egged on by Mr. Obama, who used Representative John Lewis’s funeral to announce his support for scrapping the 60-vote majority.

Many of Mr. Biden’s closest advisers and former colleagues say he is still loath to burn bridges with Republicans. He’s the same man, they say, who supported civil rights as a young senator but still worked with the Senate’s arch segregationists, something he boasted about as recently as last year.

“This convention gives you a very good sense of his belief that you can find common ground with everybody,” said Anita Dunn, one of his top strategists.

Recently, though, Mr. Biden has suggested the overlapping crises demand that the government respond the way it did during the Depression and World War II, and he told reporters that Senate Democrats would have “to take a look at” at eliminating or modifying the filibuster should Republicans prove “obstreperous.”

Yet in the same interview, he predicted Senate Republicans would be “liberated” by a Trump loss.

That was not his experience in 2009, when Republican leaders steered their members away from cooperating to ameliorate the last economic downturn or pass health care legislation. Instead, they believed they could more effectively tap into voter anger in the midterms if they united in opposition.

“If they choose to repeat 2009, and McConnell slaps his hand away, then we’ve got choices to make,” said Mr. Coons, who in 2017 co-wrote a bipartisan letter defending the filibuster. He added, “If we’re six months into it and they’re blocking every piece of legislation, I’m willing to re-examine my commitment to defending the filibuster.”