We all have our biases, and I’ll confess two of mine: I am unapologetically taken every year by the joy this season inspires, and I’m often guilty of being a hope-monger — a disposition popularized by former President Barack Obama.

In that spirit, I had wanted to greet Christmas and the start of Hanukkah (they fall on the same day this year) preaching the possibility of cooperation across our political divide to solve some problems.

There is, for example, promising overlap between progressives and pro-family conservatives in support of public policies that champion parents and children, including a much-expanded child tax credit.

Then there was the original funding deal to avoid a government shutdown, chock-full of medium-sized policy advances that had support among Republicans and Democrats alike.

The bill included provisions to help children battling cancer. Hard to oppose that, right? (Hold that thought.) As Sam Stein recounted in the Bulwark, one of these would have extended funding for the Gabriella Miller Kids First Pediatric Research Program, named after a 10-year-old Virginia girl who died from an inoperable brain tumor.

Other provisions, as The Post reported, included measures to lower drug costs by reforming how pharmacy benefit managers do business; a crackdown on junk fees charged by ticket sellers and hotels; criminalizing the publication of nonconsensual, intimate material known as “revenge porn”; new restrictions on U.S. investments in China; and continued federal reimbursement to states providing benefits to the victims of food stamp theft. Bipartisan problem-solving seemed alive and well.

Then along came a multibillionaire who owns a social media company and seems to have the president-elect mesmerized. Elon Musk denounced the spending agreement in more than 100 posts on X, many of them riddled with falsehoods. “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill,” he thundered, “deserves to be voted out in 2 years!”

Here’s hoping we’ll learn whether the original bill’s provision about investments in China, where Musk has substantial interests, was at the heart of his fury. “It feels to me there were a lot of things that were not great for billionaires and corporations that dropped out of this bill. And I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Friday night. He voted for the deal because it was preferable to a shutdown.

Before Musk’s outbursts, Donald Trump had kept his distance from House Speaker Mike Johnson’s labors and appeared ready to let the Louisiana Republican lead his troops into a peaceful holiday period.

But Trump eventually fell into line behind Musk. Ignoring the bill’s bipartisan initiatives, he ordered Republicans to strip out what he called “DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS.” And just like that, a piece of legislation he had graced with benign neglect was transformed into “a betrayal of our country.”

Snapping to attention, Johnson dumped all that good stuff mentioned above out of the bill — even the funding to help kids with cancer. At Trump’s request, he also added a two-year extension of the debt ceiling. The political motivation was blatant: Trump wanted to get it done now so he would not have to sign the increase himself and, in doing so, underscore the deficit-bloating implications of the enormous tax cuts for the wealthy he’ll be pushing.

So, yes, card-carrying hope-mongers need to face the realities of the next four years. Even if the governing wing of the GOP is willing to do some constructive work with Democrats, Johnson’s eagerness to bend to Musk and Trump shows how easy it will be to throw bipartisan projects overboard. And such modest gains will be of far less import than Trump’s eagerness to use the legal system and the executive branch against his political foes and the news media. Defending against such abuses is Job One.

Still, we can cheer the gumption of the 38 Republicans who were willing to defy Trump’s request for a debt ceiling increase. By joining with the Democrats to kill Johnson’s initial bill, they pushed the debt ceiling issue into next year.

Sure, members of this largely right-wing group are not likely to champion bipartisan cooperation. But they did show how divisions among Republicans could force the party to make concessions to opponents, whether it wants to or not.

Let’s also celebrate one partially happy ending in the wee hours of Saturday morning after the Senate approved the spending agreement averting a shutdown. Although some of the provisions to help children with cancer remained, shamefully, on the cutting-room floor, the Senate quickly passed a separate bill, cleared earlier this year by the House, to extend funding for the pediatric cancer research center — financing that had been eliminated in the Musk-Trump frenzy. It was a win for kids and a signal to the partisans of hope that we should never stop fighting.

E.J. Dionne is a columnist with the Washington Post.